June 28, 2026 – I Got High Holed, Lost a Stud, but Still Had a Great Late-June Outing – SEPA

Insurance shot of piggy #1

I committed to the thing this morning.  The summer grind.  I was suited up at 5:30 AM and wet wading balls’ deep into a spot on a SEPA limestoner that tends to stay cold.  A couple days of clouds and a little rain this week helped the cause.  We did not get as much as forecasted, not nearly as much as we need, but a little color helps.  It wasn’t American Flag blue or anything, but there was a stain.  I don’t often over-plan my trips, but I went as far as to track precip totals in the region last night, and I found a little pocket that got half an inch.  That definitely helped narrow down stream selection. Near my house, we got half of that until the evening, when we got a short deluge.  Wet wading in 60 F creek water when you have to go over the waist to get into a spot, well, that is an adventure.  Sadly, I was reminded early why I don’t visit here as often as I would like to, as often as I used to.  Even though I was here before anyone else, not a half hour and a few rainbows on a streamer into my morning, I smelled tobacco smoke pass behind me.  That smoke must have belonged to the guy who high holed me about 6:15 AM.  As I shared, I had already done some work to get into this spot, while dude decided to skip the hard but sometimes most fishy spots and jump ahead of me.  Maybe he didn’t see me?  Pretty sure he did.  Maybe he was new to this thing?  Likely, based on how he was fishing.  He was nymphing in a very unnatural posture and often standing where the fish are—too much wading, especially marching right into the crick without fishing the seams close to you, is a dead give away that you are not a sharpy.  Wild fish, especially with water at 60 F, can be anywhere on a Class A creek.  Front-plater?  Well, honestly, it was hard to tell from 25 yards away on a somewhat-foggy morning 😉 

The reason I take insurance shots in the net and Piggy #2.

My typical mode is this: if I see a car or two at a spot and I know it’s a one-man beat, I move on.  You may have noticed that I’ve got spots, and I work to get more as fast as I abandon or temporarily abandon others.  If someone jumps ahead of me, I ask “Which way are you fishing?” as an opener.  If they say upstream, then I say, “Well, I have been here a while and am heading that way too.  I am going to move upstream past you and give you some space….” HINT HINT.  If dude is an a-hole and jumps me again, I throw rocks in the pools above him.  Kidding.  I say a little something along the lines of watching a stream etiquette video on the same platform you learned to cast, and then I go to another spot or go home if I have already had my fill for the morning.  Most of the time, I just move to another spot on the creek or another creek because the conflict can ruin a day and for what?  Today, I was not backtracking through deep water to abandon this spot, especially since fish were biting early.  I had a few rainbows on a streamer already and was hoping to find active browns along the way based on conditions.  I watched dude fish for a minute while I rigged to nymph, and I liked my odds of catching fish behind him.

Other wild fish in the riffles, but nothing of size.

And catch fish behind him, I did.  I landed two high teens browns, and I broke off a brown in the 20s.  That one got to me more than the high holing.  It was a heartbreaker, enough to make me dry heave as the adrenaline from my focused fight left my body.  I did everything right besides not using heavier tippet, basically.  When I decided it was time to end this fight, I broke him off trying to turn him away from the bank and towards my waiting net.  Apparently, he was not done despite jumping twice, ranging all over this deep hole, and at least twice allowing me to get his head to break the surface and come my way.  He had one more lunge that just broke the tippet at the fly.  I was so close to ending this thing, so close!  Had I not landed the other two beasts, I may have been sick to my stomach.  In retrospect, it was a series of (un)fortunate events that even allowed me to have a shot at this fish, so I was not really mad at him.

Some stockers to round out the morning's catch.

I landed the first good fish, and because it was so big, I dropped my thermometer to make sure I was not going to exhaust the next one.  Not a chance.  The water was 60 F, and the fish went back spry as heck.  The second one did too, not two casts later!  I sure hope high hole dude from Jersey saw all the commotion down here in the honey hole he skipped or fished poorly!  Anway, I moved on after the two piggies since conventional wisdom would say that two big fish fighting all over the hole would probably put down any others for a while.  Two things happened after that, and I ended up standing in the same spot again messing with the king of the hole.  First, while walking up the creek to approach the riffles above this hole, I saw a bumblebee struggling in the water.  I did not rescue him, no!  The kid in me tossed him out into the current to see who would eat him.  Well, a massive fish rose and ate the bee where I had already caught two big fish.  If that was not enough, a text from Eric asking about water temps reminded me that my thermometer was still down there.  What’s a guy to do while he’s back retrieving his stream thermometer at the hole where a bumble bee just got got ?  Make a cast, of course.  You know the rest of the story already.  I don’t know if there was a lesson to learn, or it was just luck.  I am sure there a larger lessons about high-holers and front-platers and all those distractions and disruptions.   Another time.

June 21, 2026 – Exploring a New Stretch of Crick and Finding Some Small(s) Success – NEPA

A spa day?

Brian sent me a pin last week, a legal parking spot on a stretch of unposted river that he and I had not yet fished together.  I knew my son had to work on Father’s Day, and I was not in the mood to visit my old man’s grave on what is supposed to be a happy day in my book.  One thing that makes me happy is fishing, right?  Not that I want it to be some new tradition, but I think I did this last year, too.  I likened it to a spa day on Mother’s Day, except my spa day started with me getting on the road at 4 AM and quitting the beautiful but warm day by 10 AM.  Four hours was just enough to cover this beat, which I covered pretty quickly in the low water.  There was a lot of low, dead water, and where there was depth in places, it was often frog water—I literally spooked a dozen frogs on Friday on a similarly low Lehigh River.  I knew from the gage that it would be low, like really low, but I knew from my visit to this area last Tuesday that the water temperature would be fine.  I was right on both accounts.  I did catch at least 25 trouts, however.  Like Friday, most of them were juveniles, maybe even a couple of fingerlings.  The two best fish were stocker rainbows, but they were ornery and acrobatic. And I did catch a couple adult browns in the places I knew had to be prime spots in better conditions.  Low water is a great time to explore, so I explored, but I did not take the excursion too seriously or move to a second location when I reached a logical end of the line.  It was just a relaxing walk on the creek with a fishing rod with enough cooperative fish to be more than a hike.

A few adults cooperated.

After parking, I hiked a deer trail downstream for about 10 minutes until I ran into frog water.  I could have gone further, and Brian shared a landmark in his text last week that would be a good place to start if I wanted more water to explore.  I have done this enough to know that the beat I had before me would be more than enough to have a morning.  I moved faster than I imagined, but I also spent time in the few prime spots picking through dinkers to find a handful of adults, including the holdover rainbows.  Small bugs was the order of the day.  This creek does not have a lot of bug life, but midges were heavy in a few riffle-ly sections.  Most of the trout ate an olive perdigon on the anchor or a caddis larva, but an equal number took a small CDC dropper tag too.  I had to fish upstream and far away from myself, and yet I am sure I still spooked a couple fish in the deeper water below riffles and runs.  It might have been a day to toss a terrestrial into the deeper slack water from a distance, but it was chilly to start, so bugs may not move around until 10 AM when the day starts in the 50s.  My compromise was to toss a streamer at wood in some of those spots.  The streamer was a chub magnet, so every fish eats every other fish in this rather infertile place, which explains how plump some fish get.

More fishes.

As noted, there were definitely some sexy looking holes along the way, and it was good to see the slower deep areas in low water.  Some of the deep stretches would be chest high in normal flows, and some had undercut banks and wood, so there are not just little browns living here.  But today was the day for the little browns to feast on midges, I suppose.  I got so many pecks and short hits, and I yanked a few little fingerlings skyward on the hookset.  In shallow riffles, reaction time has to be fast, which sometimes means a bit too much muscle by accident.  All it takes is not setting hard on a good fish to lose it, and I have learned that the hard way over the years.  I was hoping a rainbow in the mid-teens was one such fish worth the hookset, but she jumped within seconds of being hooked and jumped at least three more times just to make it clear she was not an equal-sized wild brown.  The best wild fish was likely 10 or 11 inches and fought well too.  It was good to see a new stretch of creek and have some success despite unfavorable conditions.  It was a perfect day for a exploratory walk.  I have had worse Father’s Days!

A few prime spots held fish that weren't 2 years old.  A fine morning for some exploring.

June 19, 2026 – A Lot of Work, a Lot of Steps, While Wet Wading Cold Front Conditions, All for a Dozen Youths – NEPA

Low water dinkfest.

Without a major change in the weather pattern, it’s feeling close to over this spring, right in time for the first day of summer.  I am almost ready to switch to bass.  RR knows I say this every year, so I am the boy who cried wolf when it comes to quitting the spring, but today might help me commit.  I have never fished this river this low.  Sadly, I actually chose this spot because I can only fish it in low water, and I have had some really memorable days here with the wild browns.  I first waded up to this spot in early June of 2023 during a prolonged dry spell.  I was not shocked, but I was pleasantly surprised at the size of the browns that had decided to get up into this shallow riffle and feed.  On a big Class A creek in Central PA, I would have expected them to be here in numbers at this time of year, but the river is not Class A.  This section was and has been, arguably remains, Class A, just with really small fish today.  I have heard regulars like Tigereye discuss not catching small wild browns in the river, and the place that always comes to mind as a counter is this stretch, but there were typically nice fish mixed with the smalls.  This morning, I had 6 fish under 8 inches in the first hour and worked for 6 more and my first by-catch smalljaw of the year during the remaining 4 hours on the water.  I actually caught a fish (and managed not to net) in a tributary on the hike out that looked like a brookie, and the brookie was as big at the browns I caught in the main river!  I also caught two YOY in the main river, likely a first for me.  They were 3 inches long and did not need to be handled for a photo, but I know they are there.  Some fish do spawn on the main river, it seems.  Pretty tough fish who are gambling with ever-changing conditions and flows!  I do believe most of the wild fish come from the tributaries, but there is reproduction in the river too.  I saw three or four fallfish mounds, a couple of them nearly dry with the low water, so survival of the fittest here, for sure.

Need some rain, but it was pretty and pretty windy out there with no humidity (or bugs).

A cold front came through in the wee hours, so by 7 AM I had to deal with gusty winds out of the North.  That did not make fishing light bugs in shallow water any easier.  I had to fish heavier and swing my drifts a bit more, but I made the lulls count and got some good enough drifts to fool an adult trout had he or she been in the riffle with their offspring.  The wind doubly sucked because I had hiked in with my dry fly rod in the tube and had stashed it on the bank.  There have been times where fish in this stretch would begin rising in the flat and deep holes below the riffle.  Against brand, I twice sat on a rock and waited for some surface activity.  I never put the rod together.  I probably should have if only to muscle an indicator up into the wind because the mono rig and a thingamabobber were not doing the job in 20 MPH winds.  I could see to the bottom in 6 feet of water, and the sun was bright, so I am not sure anything would have worked all that well.  No bugs of note.  I saw midges, one or two 18 BWOs, and no caddis, so I was fishing a small bug on the dropper tag.  Ironically, all the little fish hit the anchor fly near the bottom, which was often heavy and bigger just to track in the wind.  Trying to crack the code, I even threw a single size 10 pheasant tail jig, just to determine if slate drakes or other big bugs were on the menu still.  Results were much the same.  A dink or two, the bass.

The future is bright for this stretch of river at least.  And some coolwater by-catch.

With the dry wind, it was like fishing out West.  My wet wading pants dried on the walk out and while I was having lunch at the ‘Ru contemplating another move.  Instead, for old times, now ancient times, sake, I snuck up this trib a little ways.  It was a pleasure to be in the deep shade and out of the wind, but the water was low and clear.  I fought the aforementioned fish in a deep plunge for a few seconds before he flopped off in the tail out.  It was good to see at least one in there.  I did not have the juice to keep climbing a mountain trickle with my 10-foot rod, so I quit after this short diversion.  It was a really nice day for humans, but not great for fish.  Stream selection based on conditions is pretty important too….  In my defense, it does not make it easy when all the little cricks is mad low.  I am still happy I got out fishing in mid-June during this dry, warm year.

Pretty and pretty boney.

June 16, 2026 – A Solo Walk Through Coal Country on a Perfect June Morning – NEPA

A perfect morning.

With Brian’s blessing and some intel, I took my second Tuesday in a row to fish for the trouts before the fishing for the trouts is but a memory (at least until late September or early October).  I visited a watershed that I have fished a few times now with Brian.  It was a backup plan when I noticed, with the exception of the Lehigh River (which I may fish on Friday this week), all the creeks I typically visit in June were way too low and getting too warm without some help from Ma Nature.  I dropped a thermometer in this creek today, and it was 60 F at 11 AM, so there is time, but we need rain, real rain, to help the cause even in this watershed.  The thing with AMD in this region of the state is that it sometimes creates an artificial limestone experience with the deep bore holes from former mining operations.  The color is a bit off, surely not that pretty limestone green, and the rocks show the rusty color of what scary stuff is in the water, but the water is undeniably cold.  The Brodhead by comparison is hitting 70-something each afternoon now—also known as done until the fall.  It was a perfect weather day for humans, so I was not uncomfortable in waders today, but waders seem like a necessity here even if I'd wanted to wet wade (I did).  That doesn’t stop the locals from swimming, but maybe they are made of tougher (uninformed?) stuff.  Two young bucks floated by on tubes today!  I am thinking Ward and I would have done the same, orange water be damned on a hot day during summer vacation.

A good start with a pattern established before 6:30 AM.

I was suited up to slide down into the creek before 6 AM, and after a short walk upstream, I bet I was fishing by 6:15 AM.  It was a really nice morning: low humidity, high 40’s, sun just starting to show in gaps in the mountains.  I had a couple pins from Brian, but I punted when I saw a landmark or two I recognized.  I decided to fish first and then check out a couple new spots.  This first stretch showed better than it produced when Brian and I fished it together.  We caught fish, many fish, but after a slow start where some really nice holes gave up no fish despite looking so good.  There was also a dude fishing one of the first nice riffles that morning.  I dropped into that stretch and fished up to the riffle using the low light to cover the back of the run in case they were set up there.  I quickly learned that they were up in the bouncy stuff and feeling strong and happy.  I caught a solid wild brown and an average fish in that first spot and luckily found the pattern that worked for the next five hours straight.  No big fish unless you count a couple mutant stocker bows who must get in from community stockings and stocked tributaries, but it was a numbers day for sure.  I lost count after a while and was wetting my hands and releasing many fish without the net by 10 AM.  Too many 8-10 inch fish in each likely spot.

The trifecta before noon

Throughout the course of the morning, I likely notched the wild fish trifecta: brown, bow, brookie plus two varieties of creek chub/minnow.  Those rough natives were the ones hanging in the back of the runs in the deeper water, which is sometimes a sign that the end of spring fishing is near.  Here, it is also a great sign that all the wild species are coming back from the brink of extinction.  I have seen a heavy midge presence each time I've been here, but I have seen caddis in decent numbers too.  Today, I actually stopped and watched wild browns take caddis off the surface for a good 10 minutes before I caught the three of them with my dropper tag—the same red tag CDC blowtorch that Brian and I had to beat the fish off of on our last visit, a fly that does a great job of looking like an emerging caddis pupa too.  I also caught a lot of small wild browns, likely two year olds, and even a couple YOY in those creek chub holes.  Along the way there were some solid wild browns and some spunky, acrobatic wild rainbows—the descendants of diploid fingerling stockings.  They prefer very different water, and they are fun to pull out of shallow, fast riffles where they don’t hesitate to clobber your offerings.  Brian was convinced I might bring up a piggy today, but when I thought I had hooked one finally, it was a big stocker rainbow.  I even put on a streamer in two holes that yell big fish live here! and only found a couple average browns wanted Eric’s big bugger.  I like big trout, of course, but I was content with the numbers today, honestly.

More insane rainbows.  The bugger hail mary only netted average size fish.

I was running out of drinking water around 11 AM, so I fished two more spots on this beat, left them biting (and rising) about 11:45 AM, and started hiking back.  The plan was to take a break in a park with some shade, eat, drink an iced coffee, and then explore a couple of the pins Brian shared.  I backtracked to a nice community park on the river with a shady tree and a picnic bench.  This happened to be a place Brian and I met one morning and actually fished.  When my son texted around 1 PM that he may get out of work early, I decided just to fish here after my break.  My wife was out with her car, so he was going to need a ride from me (or an Uber).  I don’t much love fishing in the heat and high sun, anyway, so I pledged to fish another hour in my current location and call it good.  This was not the adventure I had planned, but I was happy seeing spots for the second time and figuring some stuff out without Brian sharing his knowledge along the way.  It's typically how I learn cricks, anyway.

The locals don't seem to mind the potentially toxic sludge ;)  Even saw risers today.

I caught more wild browns in the heads of riffles after catching chubs back deeper in the runs, but they were more pecky and therefore more challenging.  The size of the active fish was also dropping.  It was the afternoon lull that I may have fished through on a different day.  It might have been a great time to explore one of Brian’s pins, but I stopped at the end of the next riffle and plunge below a low head dam.  It was here that I think my boys the tubers put in.  They were happy and polite as they drifted by, and I was kind of jealous standing there in my waders—but that orange water, you know?  At the end of the line, I saw a fish up in the water column moving like he was feeding.  Compared to my last four fish on this beat, he was a stud, maybe 12 inches or more.  He actually ate my bugs on the first cast at him, dug into some wood, leaped twice, and was gone.  That was my reminder to head for home before afternoon traffic started picking up.  It would have been a nice note to end on, but it kind of was anyway.  A brief exciting battle in a challenging spot after a day of very cooperative trouts, most of which stayed on the hook.  My guide in absentia (well, over text message) was happy for my success despite laughing at my lack of exploration today.  Even without the ride share duty to my son, sometimes it’s fun to visit new spots a second time solo and just do my own thing there, so I have no regrets.  It was a Tuesday in June with many, many wild trouts.  All good.

Many pretty wild fishes, most of which escaped the camera lens today.

June 9, 2026 – A Long Tour of the Lehigh River with Distinguished Guest Stars – NEPA

A pig, a donkey, just a thick one.

I got up at 3:15 am today and was on the road to meet Larry at 6 AM in the Lehigh River gorge.  I did not roll into my driveway tonight until 10:15 PM, after finishing the day with some dry fly fishing with Tigereye Joe up above White Haven.  It was my first trip wet wading, and I don’t recommend wearing wet pants that long to anyone.  I could have used some Triple Paste from the diaper bag by 8 PM, but it was worth it.  It got pretty hot by 1 PM, so I would not have made it all day in waders, anyway.  Fishing was challenging, as it can be on the river, especially with the wild fish, but I had a good day with good company, and I even caught a huge brown on Eric’s big, heavy jig streamer.  One major purpose of the morning round was to give Larry a mono-rig lesson, and had he caught some fish, it would have made for a much more successful day.  I think we’ve long established that I can be a terrible guide despite my best intentions (just ask my son).  Larry can fish and read water, which is half the battle, so he was in the game and would have caught.  We picked a heck of day and venue for his lessons, but he wanted this!  Honestly, even I had to go into my bag of tricks to get bit today.  That huge brown was hugging the bottom in current in a little spot within a spot, and I needed close to a ¼ ounces of tungsten to get Eric’s bugger down to him.  Other fish came on the swing, but heavy swinging tungsten bugs, so not many were coming off the bottom while we were in the gorge.  I had to figure some stuff out, and even then I had some challenges.  I lost another good brown after Larry left, and before that I broke a rod while fighting a fish.  It ended up being quite the day and not the one I had planned.

Larry doing it all to catch (and photographic evidence he once fished a mono-rig).

Larry gave it a shot for a couple hours before cutting off the mono-rig and swinging wets and even tossing a big dry.  He moved a couple fish that way late in the morning, but I think by then he’d taken such a Lehigh beating that he wasn’t ready when the few opportunities presented themselves.  Lord knows, I have been there, and more often than I’d like on big rivers.  Even when the water is low and you can move around and get at fish that would be off limits in higher flows, the fish still have to be willing to meet you halfway.  They decided to be dicks today.  One even made me strip him in by hand with mono and the top four feet of my broken 10’6” 4 weight rod.  It was like they wanted us to suffer a little.  To that end, after Larry and I parted ways about 12:30 PM, and I had a couple hours before I was going to call Joe for our meetup, I returned to a honey hole and caught rainbows and dropped the aforementioned good brown that tentatively took a perdigon on the dropper tag.  It was another wide, wild brown too!  At least the cooperative rainbows were a good sign that Joe and I had a good chance of getting into fish for the third shift.   Joe actually called a little after 2 PM to check on me when I didn’t check in with him.  I had intended only to put in an hour and then take a break to prepare for round three, but it was 3 PM before I arrived at our meeting spot.  I get more obsessive with figuring stuff out when fishing is tough, and figuring it out only to lose a good fish, well, that makes me stay even longer sometimes!

I did catch 8-10 fish early, including some other wild browns, but it was work sometimes.

Joe had gotten into fish for a few evenings, mostly prospecting with big dry flies, but there were hatches happening too.  We were hoping to get into a mess of rising fish.  True to today’s general character, we encountered very few bugs and only brief flourishes of rising fish.  Joe is a better guide than me, however.  I got a couple fish prospecting with a stimulator, and then dug up a wild brown and a couple small natives while working through pocket water with a dry dropper.  When we ended up in the same hole a while later, Joe suggested an Adams in size 16 ahead of the setting sun.  Even with my eyes tired from a long day squinting in the sun, I took his advice and tied on a smaller dry.  I trust my casting accuracy, so even blindish I know where my fly lands and have an idea where it’s drifting enough to set when a fish shows.  I had a blast targeting a handful of risers in a riffle, and we both had fish eat just fishing the water.  If you got a fly in the spot without drag, even for a couple feet of good drift, you had a shot at a trout playing along.  I teased Joe that he was getting cocky, calling out spots for me, but he knows this river well.  Thankfully, I am competent enough that I did not let him down.  I used to do this dry fly thing quite a bit.

Joe out there making it look effortless.  A quality stocker.

We arrived too early to catch evening risers, so Joe gave me a walking tour of a couple of holes while we just caught up.  It had been since last June since we’d fished together.  I recall that was a tough day too.  On the tour, Joe pointed out a few places where he noted that if you got a dry close enough to a certain rock or foam line you would get eaten.  When we fished close to each other as the night closed, he pointed at some of those spots again, and I executed the plan.  He was not wrong about any of the spots, of course.  Besides the one wild brown I caught and the dink brookies, Joe caught a decent wild brown and a legal brook trout that certainly looked wild.  Where there are tribs with brookies, this happens on the river.  Most of the fish were stockers, but they were all on dry flies and fun.  Joe and I actually talked about the confusion around chasing buckets dumped at a bridge vs big water, often float-stocked, where fish are spread around and holdover.  There are some quality stockie experiences in PA, as many of you know: Pine, Brodhead, Bald Eagle, (begrudgingly) the Tully, and certainly the Lehigh River.  And they are not always pushovers.  After the challenging morning, I was glad that these stocked fish were cooperative.  Despite some sore muscles and the diaper rash, it was a fine day with finer company, like a three-day fishing vacation crammed into one.

Joe called this my Orvis pose.  I had to share with Josh and Brian to prove I own fly line!