An absolutely gorgeous, non-skunked day

I was up until about 2am tying flies and watching TV, but I really didn't mind when I got up before 8pm today because I knew it was going to be an awesome day. My son doesn't like us to sleep. After spending some quality time with the wife and little guy at a nearby park I headed up to the stream. I had heard that yesterday the water was still really clear. That wasn't the case today. When I got there, it was about 50% higher than usual, and starting to get pretty discolored. I had dry flies ready to go, but quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. Oh well, at least it was about 62 degrees.


I met up with Schiff, one of the moderators over at my favorite place on the web, Eastern PA Fishing Reports. We threw a bunch of different flies at lockjawed trout for a few hours. After probably about 1.5-2 hours and six different fly patterns, I had a brown trout try to slam my slumpbuster when I had it stripped almost all the way in. I watched where he went, cast again and got him about a minute later. If you aren't familiar with that fly, click here for a photo of one from a previous post. The one he hit was a size 6 in chocolate brown. Sorry for the poor pic. He tried to swallow the fly and I didn't want to keep him out of the water for long after I removed it. He was beautiful wild brown trout, about 11-12 inches long.



After another half hour of no action, I headed upstream and changed up my flies. my brother-in-law, Nick, showed up to fish with me and we started working the holes in front of the trout nursery and planned to work our way downstream. The water was starting to really pick up and started turning the color of chocolate Yoohoo. I figured if streamers were no longer working, I needed something to get their attention. I threw on a neon pink honeybug as an attractor and trailed it with one of my favorite patterns, a rubbered legged red copper john.

A holdover rainbow, in full prespawn colors (I love when they get the deep red gill plates) decided to take the copper john. He was a nice 14 inch fish, really plump and healthy. I also forgot how fun it is to hook in to a fish that A)You can't see and B) is in really fast high water. I'm so used to sight-fishing for spooked fish in low flows and gin clear water from this really cold winter we've had.



After losing about half a dozen flies in some big rocks, we hit a few more holes downstream, praying for some rises since there were dozens of size 22 BWOs flying around. That didn't happen. Nick unfortunately got the skunk, and I didn't land another fish. The only other highlight of my afternoon was when I decided to tie on the sex dungeon after exhausting every other fly I thought would work. I started stripped it under a foot bridge where I know a dozen big bows like to hold. I couldn't believe it, but one came up and nosed it as a I was stripping it in. I'll have to try it again sometime.

The sun started to set and we packed it up. I couldn't have asked for a better day. I caught some fish on a few of my favorite patterns to tie, enjoyed the nice weather, and had some great company. I can't wait for spring.