April 27, 2025 – An Afternoon Avoiding the Wind and Trying to Avoid the Ravenous Rainbows – NEPA

Trickle fishing this afternoon.

I fished a small stocked creek with a healthy population of wild browns this afternoon from about 3:30 to 7:30 PM.  I was hoping to find a place to avoid the wind (yet again) and, ironically enough, catch a couple on a dry fly.  I don’t often fish the afternoon, so I had to take advantage of possibly being there for some surface activity.  This early in the season, I expected that I would have to pick through a dozen bows to find a wild fish, especially after a couple weeks of caddis hatching in the afternoon.  So, if you do the math, I was actually way too on the money.  It would not be an overestimate to say I landed 33 rainbows and 3 browns during my visit.  And, as hoped, I walked into the tail end of rising fish and got a good one to eat the dry.  I should have been there at 2 PM not 3:30 PM.  I was tied up in the morning on lawn duty for my mom—the boy’s parttime job where I don’t get paid but do 40% of the work!  Mom did have fresh meatballs on the stove, however, so I will work for food (and leftover Easter candy).  The best I could do was leave home a little after 2 PM.  I thought about going closer to home, but I had this creek in mind for a couple weeks now and, in theory, it was perfect for a windy day.  I don’t know how the fish were picking out caddis in all the wind-driven pollen and blossoms in the water, and many fish seemed to be chasing the emergers (more on that later) but I got my fattest small stream beauty if not my longest one of the day to eat the caddis dry fly with gusto.  I had a couple refusals and dropped one more before switching to the nymphs, which were eaten on the swing with equal enthusiasm.

A fatty on the dry, and a nicer fish on the swing.

Attack of the killer rainbows ensued.  I could not keep them off the bugs.  I would nymph a hole up to the head and catch a few, and then from the head I would swing the same bugs down and across where I had just fished and catch the rest of them.  Fun, until I started to worry that I would never see another brown this afternoon.  Eventually, I got a little guy to outcompete the rainbows and eat a swinging caddis pupa.  Near that same spot, I got another healthy small stream fish to eat on the swing.  This was a beautiful fish that the low light did not do justice.  The upside of fishing this creek with all the cover was that the wind was partially blocked at times, but the downside is that I felt like I was running out of daylight depending on the bends in the creek and the declining angle of the afternoon sun.  That said, last year I invested in a second (or third) pair of polarized lenses, and these amber yellow ones really have paid dividends.  I can wear them before 6 AM and after 6 PM and still see really well, even in canopied cricks like this one.  For as often as my day ends before noon, these have become my go-to glasses.  Rainy streamer day?  Perfect.

Photographing rainbows = herding cats.  Trout in the classroom (TIC) planting below?

I was also messing with a micro-mono rig today on my 9-footer in anticipation of brookie fishing next weekend with Josh and Brian in Northcentral PA.  I had 25 feet of 10 lb. Maxima green to some thin 3x sighter material to my 5x tippet.  Behind that is my 3wt floating line, so I can easily convert to dry fly fishing in minutes.  Today, despite the wind, I got eats throwing the dry fly on the mono rig.  It’s amazing what you can do with the weight of a dropper nymph and a slightly altered cast to deliver the dry/dropper, so I don’t always have to spend the time unwinding the mono rig, especially in close quarters where stealth trumps long casts, anyway.  I enjoy fishing a dry dropper, but not in plunge pools if the dry is only serving as an indicator.  I am sure young Josh will give me grief about fishing a mono rig next weekend, which is partially why I am doing it 😉 We are going to be camping in the state forest lands in northern Clinton County.  With the low water, a little rain would be nice, and I see a chance on Friday, but either way it should be fun hanging out with the boys and doing some blue-lining.  With all the bows today, my reflexes should be fine-tuned.

Bonus shot from the other angle.  Still bad lighting.

April 21 and 22, 2025 – A Couple Short Trips on the Home Home Waters – SEPA

Crowds on a Monday and brookies.

Maybe I need to pay more attention to social media, but besides my own blog, one fly fishing forum, and one surf fishing forum, I stay off the stuff.  In general, I don’t find it informative or all that exciting, until I decide naively to fish the Wissahickon on Easter Monday AND the day after the big tournament hosted by the dudes in Roxborough.  When I arrived at a park entrance about 7:30 AM on Monday morning, I started to put two and two together.  There were a lot of trucks that looked like fishing and hunting vehicles, not the usual Monday morning dog walkers, cyclists, and runners.  I suited up at home, so I was walking towards the crick in no time.  Peeking over the bridge, I had my confirmation.  Dudes lined up on both sides of the creek, upstream and downstream.  Water is not high, but it’s not low yet, so I decided to avoid the holes, and potentially a 29-inch brown trout or 25-inch rainbow, and fish for the average ones the Comish put in who’ve likely wandered since Opening Day.  There were some midges and caddis flying around by 9 AM, and after nymphing a couple up in the riffles, I actually had the most success and fun doing something different.  I started swinging the caddis pupa down and across.  This also got the attention of little smallmouth bass, rock bass, sunfish, so I was having steady action.  I figured if I was fishing for stocked trouts, then I should practice a skill I find comes in handy during caddis hatches, you know, so I am ready for the main event some morning with wild fish.  I made the most of staying away from the crowds, until they started giving up and moving around or leaving.

Some stockers on the swing.

A slight cold front had come through on Easter evening, so the air temperature had dropped about 10 degrees.  As a result, fishing was not on fire.  I watched a lot of dudes chunking a spinner and quickly moving around and not landing fish.  When I got to a favorite hole, a few younger guys and a retiree were complaining that the fish ate briefly at sunrise and then shut off.  I don’t believe the three younger dudes, sharing two rods, had touched a fish.  I felt a little guilty when I switched to a heavier peeking caddis and hooked a couple in this deeper hole, but not that guilty.  I did not catch 10, just 3, and made my departure for home—I was on borrowed time on a workday, just sneaking out because I had a light morning and had not visited the Wissy since Opening Day with Eric.  I wanted a Monday with some solitude in the park, and by fishing away from the crowds for much of the morning, I sort of accomplished that?

Crick pics and a fat bow.

Skip ahead to Tuesday, and I had to join the procrastinators who had not secured their Real IDs.  I took the day off to accomplish what I assumed would be a 3-hour ordeal.  It was 5 hours.  I was smart enough to put my fishing stuff in the ‘Ru in case I had the itch or needed to decompress after DMV hell.  Stony was right there in N-town, but I decided to head closer to home.  I got some food and Gatorade and headed to another stretch of the mighty Wissahickon.  No one works anymore.  The lot was full of people at 2 PM.  I guess I was calling the kettle black, but I am sure these places are like this every day.  Thankfully, most of the vehicles did not belong to fishermen, although I did see a dozen on the crick or leaving the crick.  Again, not for nothing, but the Comish drives Forbidden Drive and dumps buckets all over, not just at the easy access points!  I took a walk away from the crowds, had two prime holes to myself, and landed at least 7 fish in a couple hours.  It was the middle of the day, so fishing was not on fire, and I had to look for them in a couple of old favorites that were not stocked, but once I found them, I was able to get them to eat.  With the water low and pretty clear (for the Wissy) they just wanted a natural bug, a size 14 green caddis larva.  They’ve been ducking spinners for several days, so I should have fished midges!  Dude in the lot had a whopper plopper on his baitcaster telling me that people were catching them on flies, as I pulled the fly rod out of the back of my vehicle….  It was confirmation that the fish have seen the bugs hatching, however sporadically, and are starting to swear off corn and Velveeta (and topwater).  I am still thankful that I have this beautiful place so close to home—even the jamokes in lifted diesel trucks with bass gear add a special charm to the place.  I encountered no a-holes in two days, just people enjoying the arrival of spring.  Protect the Wiss, yo!

A simple natural bug fooled more than a handful.

April 19, 2025 – As Spring Begins to Settle, Another Good Morning – NEPA

Last one of the day was the best one.

Still targeting bigger creeks and rivers as a way to maximize the opportunity lower water this time of year affords, I hit the river this morning at sunrise.  I had a bit of a walk to a favorite stretch where I was hoping to find grannom caddis in the numbers I encountered them a bit south a week ago.  Instead, it appeared to be small, like size 18, brown caddis hatching in the highest numbers.  Only a couple fish seemed to care, including one pig way across the river, low for April but still flowing over 700 CFS.  This fish was so big and splashy that I began to think he was targeting chubs rising to the caddis or midges, not the flies themselves.  Despite being at a good level, wading was relatively easy for a creek notoriously hard to wade, and the visibility was good. Still, I was not going to reach this fish.  There were plenty of others, including a couple very nice wild browns.  In three feet of pocket water, I could see my manly hookset turn a few of the fish, which was an advantage—it is nice to know you have good fish early in the game sometimes.  One 16+ inch fish was sitting in a pocket on the other side of the river over a fast riffle, so seeing him turn helped me formulate an endgame very early in the game.  I had to do a good downstream stumble, but I was able to do so proactively!

Another beauty.  And another.

I had a few average fish in the first hour, mostly in a deeper eddy adjacent to the main run, but fish eventually moved up into the faster water to eat.  A couple of them were definitely holdover stocked browns, but the majority appeared wild or too long in the river to show definitive stocker traits during a quick net, photograph, and release examination.  No bows or brookies, so the stocking brigade whizzed on by this spot or the fish have not moved much yet.  I was glad to leave this eddy, a notorious bug eater, since it appears some wood that was deposited a couple years ago is still there.  I like to fish this spot more when they are up off the bottom and will come out of the nonsense to eat a swinging bug or bugger.  Not today, so more of my tungsten deposited down there than I like.  It’s easier to deal with when catching fish, however.  The trout did move up as the morning progressed, but they were not spread out in the current.  Instead, they were using depressions and slicker, protected spots to avoid working too hard.  That probably explains why the risers were next to none, and I saw no emerger-chasing or porpoising fish either.  I don’t think these little caddis swim quite as well as grannoms.  I tried to make the most of all the bug life, even swinging soft hackles through the hole and down into the tailout.  I had even carried a dry fly rod, which stayed stashed in the bushes all morning.  The two best trout actually took a sulfur nymph on the dropper tag, so maybe those nymphs are moving around on the bottom fixing for their debut in the coming weeks.  

Crick pics and net pics

I encountered no other anglers on a warm Saturday, so I had chosen my spot or my timing well.  The liveries are not in full operation yet, either.  I saw a pair of buses loaded with bicycles on my way home, and I was greeted by one flotilla of kayaks accompanied by a guide in a raft.  It was warm.  The water was cold, so I was dressed for early spring, but I could feel the hot breath coming up the river once in a while.  Folks were on the rail trail in shorts when I decided to quit around noon.  I debated hitting one more spot, but my last fish at this first hole was just about a daymaker, pushing past 18 inches, and I don’t like to get greedy.  Had noses started breaking the surface hitting caddis or some Henricksons or something, I may have indulged them for a couple more hours.  In full sun at the parking lot, it was clear that 80 degrees was on its way, so that helped make my decision final.  I was due for a good day, and I was lucky enough to get one.  It feels like it’s about to get going in earnest at any minute.  I may have to burn a “sickday” this week, or at least a morning. 

Some bonus wild and a stocked trout, all pretty fish.

April 13, 2025 – The Grannoms and the Grind and the Wind – NEPA

Not the one.

Well, we had some rain that moved the needle on the gages, but we also had more cold temperatures and wind, so this spring continues to be a puzzle.  I have yet to have a great day, and I know I am not alone based on the feedback from fishing buddies and the chatter on the forums.  The aquatic insects have their own timetables, however, so the grannom caddis are getting active across the state, including in NEPA where I fished this morning.  The mayflies are there too.  I fondly remember dry fly fishing during the opening week of trout season when I was not even a high schooler.  These were Potter and Lycoming County Aprils too, but on the odd years with low water conditions, the kind of springs that actually give you a shot at dry fly fishing larger creeks this early in the spring.  I was hoping for the low water on the bigger cricks this year to allow for some of those dry fly days that are not a given in early- and mid-April.  It may still happen, as a pulse of rain does not erase months of dry weather.  Today, the creek was just a bit too high to get fish up taking dries, but they rarely ignore a swarm of caddis emerging in such force.  They at least take the pupa and nymphs in the riffles.  I got a couple average fish in the riffles during this prolonged and significant hatch, but the others were dredged up with a bobber in deep wintering holes with very little current.  The best fish was a solid fish, but I had been out since 7 AM looking for the one on a creek that has given me many big fish over the years.  I fished well, at least for the first 3 hours, and kept expecting it to happen, and then it just didn’t.

A bit cold, but it certainly looked sexy enough to keep me optimistic.

I got to cover a lot of water because the air was too cold and the water too high for most mitches this morning.  Noon brought out a handful of other anglers, but by then I was pretty much camped out in a prime hole waiting for some signs that the fish were excited by the grannoms crawling all over me.  Instead, I landed 6 trout in 5 hours, and I had to fish a known stocker hole to get on the board.  I put in 90 minutes early, just after sunrise, with a jig streamer and even a big stonefly and did not get a touch in some great spots.  On a drive to another stretch, I decided to stop at the stocker hole to get the monkey off my back.  I got one rainbow and left because I still believed that something was going to happen today.  Had the stockers made it easy, it may have been stocker day, but they too were sluggish in the cold, high flows.  I finally gave up on the idea of a pig, or even a dozen wild browns on dries or by swinging caddis pupa, at about 1 PM when the wind started pumping at a steady 15 mph with higher gusts here and there.  Had the grannoms not been so thick and the general personality of the browns in three different beats not been so dickish, the plan was to hit the headwaters of this crick and pick through some stockers for a mess of small wild browns.  Knowing I would be protected from the wind up yonder, I still debated leaving on the waders for one last drive.  Instead, I decided to conserve my energy and my optimism for another day.  It’s going to happen one of these days, so no use draining my battery on a day that was destined to disappoint from the start.  Stay tuned?

Also not the one, but half a dozen trout is better than a skunking, which felt possible early.

April 5 and 6, 2025 – Opening Day with a Mitch and then Some Small Stream Sneaking – SEPA

Rubbing alcohol and Aquaseal stat!

I wasn’t going to do it.  The boy is in Orlando for a week with his senior classmates, so I had no reason to brave the Opening Day crowds down the street.  That is until young Eric returned a fly rod I lent his kids for Mentored Youth Day last week.  He was even carrying a beer as a thank you gift!  He planned to head down to the Wissy hyper locally for a couple hours while his girls slept in.  They had a full Saturday of sports ahead, and Eric himself is coaching and in high season at his work.  I bit the bullet and said, Yes, I will accept this beer.  I hedged my bets a bit, telling him to text me in the morning and if I was up, I would go with him.  In the end, I set the alarm and decided it would be good to keep a tradition alive and good to hang out with a mitch.  It was chilly out there, especially standing waist deep, apparently with several pinholes in my waders on top of the raw, drizzly conditions.  We caught a couple fish but mostly just caught up.  We met some characters, including some cool kids way into fishing, and everyone was jovial and chill on our little piece of bend pool.  Honestly, the crowds were pretty solid—almost like days of old.  Eric said MYD was crazy, but also triggering with all the grown-ass men sans kids out fishing on a day they are supposed to be teachers not participants.  By 9:45 AM or so, we were done standing in the same hole for 90 minutes.  I got a couple rainbows to grab a bugger on the swing—on the hang really, just holding the 10-foot rod out there to let the bugger pulse in front of their faces.  I had a dozen short nips in the cold water, but I really didn’t expect much more.  Hopefully, we get a real trip on the books in the coming weeks.  I may at least convince him to take a 15 minute longer drive into the City for some water that at least looks like trout water, maybe after the Roxborough boys dump a load of monster stockers for their annual derby 😊

We put a couple fly rods in the line up!

The weather looked iffy for Sunday, but it appeared that I might find a window early in the morning if I chose the right creek (hah!).  I had a couple creeks in mind, but the further north and west I might go, the more likely I might encounter swollen cricks.  I checked one gage in the Lehigh Valley, and it had nary a blip, much like the creeks in my area.  The reason I checked this one gage is because the creek I actually wanted to fish does not have a gage itself—this gage was the gage to the closest creek.  Boy, was I surprised when I started seeing the gulleys and a small trib that lead into my destination creek.  It was completely blown out, unfishable!  I had missed a major storm by minutes, I guessed, or the government had shut down the website….  Back at the ‘Ru, I checked the gage of the nearby creek again, and it was totally fine and in working order, that same little blip from a small shot of rain.  It was maybe 7 AM, so I was not heading home.  The obvious choice was just go fish the low water on the creek with the gage and take advantage of the low light.  It took maybe 15 minutes to arrive, just winging it through town at a leisurely pace.  I was happy to encounter no other vehicles at spot two, at least.  I was also pleased to see clouds continue and a slight stain that might help my chances of scaring up a few in otherwise tough conditions.  This small creek is lined with trees and bushes and pretty shallow when not at normal spring flows.  Fish tend to tuck up under the banks, so I threaded my way up the middle fishing the sides or swinging back and forth for the best approach to each hole.  

Pretty, low: a lot different than the swollen cricks on the other side of the valley!

I hooked one early and it came off, which I saw as a good sign not a sign of things to come.  Real talk: It ended up that I could not net a fish to save my life this morning.  The first encounter was not an outlier but the norm this morning.  I hooked and fought 3 trout and 2 big white suckers, and the picture below is the only one that found the net.  Yes, I was even 50/50 on landing suckers for a photo today!  I would not have minded missing a couple shots of average 10-inch wild browns, but I actually fought a small stream beauty too!  In no more than 8 inches of water, a great 15-inch wild brown took my dropper tag, a size 18 black caddis imitation.  He was sitting in full current in the cushion in front of a big boulder with a log wedged in front of it.  He jumped twice after I hooked him, but he stayed above me, until he didn’t.  All of the sudden he decided to go downstream and fast, right past my feet.  He was probably looking for his normal hiding place when he’s not out there vulnerable and eating.  I gave chase down the middle of the crick, rod held high when I could avoid the tight canopy.  A good 30 feet down the stream, he found a bankside pile of brush and wood to get into.  I kept the line tight and was making a move to net him, branches and all, when he sprung loose.  He earned his freedom, at least.  

Karen's kin or future boyfriend.

I can’t say the same for another 10-11 inch brown that took the small bug 30 minutes later, nor Karen, my old friend the white sucker who was in her usual spot, a spot that often holds a big brown when she’s not in there.  She just did a slow motion run all over the pool before deciding, Nope, no pictures for you!  I kept working upstream, and did not find any more love.  No bugs active, not even midges, no real change in conditions despite rain happening all over the region all morning, just not over me.  I fished two holes again on the way back down and managed to land one of Karen’s kin.  I was seeing suckers on a spawning run all morning.  This one actually ate the dropper, just like Karen, and I actually took a picture of this one so that I had something to show you here for two mornings of fishing.  I had fun, but something was up with my net game today!  Maybe it was the low light or I was just out of small stream practice.  I know at least one spot where this nice brown eats and one spot he likes to hide out, so we may see him again this year.