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.