Plunge Pools and Spooky Fish

I always love fishing a new stream for the first time. We were staying at some resort in the Pocono Mountains for my son's birthday, and I decided to venture up half a day early and hit a small mountain stream. I scouted out a few on Google maps, asked for some advice from the locals on the PA Fly Fish forum, and found quite a few options. I chose one that I was told could be tough, but contained a good amount of wild browns and if you hiked enough, a solid brookie population. I stayed up tying some generic dries, a few mini-hoppers, and some small size 10 tungsten head buggers for the trip.

I asked my sister-in-law's boyfriend to join me on the trip. We arrived at Stream X at 7:00am, just after first light. My first impression was that I couldn't believe how much snow was still on the ground. We were only an hour and a half north of home where it has all but melted, but there was still anywhere from a few inches to a few feet depending on where you walked.

As we hiked down the hill side flanked by Mountain Laurel, I was blown away by the beauty of the stream. It was small;  slowly creeping down from the mountain, with lots of small plunge pools and downed branches all over. It was the perfect habitat for wild fish.

He opted to stay downstream, while I hiked a few miles upstream. It was still early, and we saw very little fish movement, until you got within 10 feet of a small pool and spooked them all. I learned quickly that I had to make long upstream casts to a few pools far above me to get any chance of fish. After some trial, error, and lost flies, I picked up a few very small wild browns. I'm talking like fingerling small. Then it was beer time.

I hoofed it back down after about 3 hours and found Dan fishing some water below a bridge. We headed back upstream and he picked up what would turn out to be the biggest fish I saw all day.

This was was challenging, but we did have moderate success. I'm definitely going to hit it up again once the hatches start coming off.