Last week I was looking forward to getting back on eastern Pennsylvania waters after three weeks of fishing on the road. I decided that on Saturday I’d continue my exploration of Keystone Select waters by heading to the Wiconisco Creek. The Wiconisco is a freestone tributary of the Susquehanna River that flows through Schuylkill and Dauphin Counties.
Read moreYellow Creek Trout Club, Andrea Larko Edition
Heading into this past weekend I was finally expecting a proper spring weekend. The daytime temperatures for Saturday were forecasted to be as high as 75°. I was excited to get out and fly fish anywhere in Pennsylvania because for the first time in three weeks water levels were perfect. The list of streams I’ve wanted to fish during the spring months has been steadily growing. Although I had my sights set on Big Pine Creek, I decided I’d head to the Yellow Creek Trout Club. If you’re asking yourself why I’d head to club waters during the middle of April, you are justified. However, I had a great opportunity to meet-up with fly fishing artist Andrea Larko to chat about a project I’m working on and do some fishing. Big Pine Creek would have to wait.
Read moreBig Nasty Bows On Cripple Creek
Pennsylvania fly fishermen were collectively pulling their hair out this past week as the state saw another week of heavy rains. A majority of popular spring trout fishing streams were well above their banks heading into Saturday. While frustrating, remember that April showers bring May flowers, as well as a healthy population of stocked trout that will hopefully last well into June with a high water table. Early last week I figured I was going to have to formulate a game plan to find fishable water on Saturday. I decided to pull out my little black book of trout streams south of the Pennsylvania border. Cross referencing streams with the path of last week’s rain storms I was able to find some water in Virginia that was minimally impacted by the rain. I targeted a small stream in southwestern Virginia named Cripple Creek.
Read moreBlown Out In The Mid-Atlantic
Late last week the mid-Atlantic was soaked by a large weather system that extended from New York, all the way to southern Virginia. On Friday afternoon I was looking at stream gauge after stream gauge on the USGS website and it was one spiked chart after another. By Friday evening, it was official, unless I wanted to drive 10 hours west to fish in central Kentucky on the Hatchery Creek; I wasn’t going to be fishing on Saturday. Accepting these realizations drove me crazy. Heaven forbid I take a Saturday and relax, tie flies, or do some reading. But this is April and April means hatching mayflies and trout. What made it worse was the realization that streams weren’t coming down overnight and Sunday was probably out too. On Saturday afternoon I shot Steve from Yellow Creek Trout Club a text and asked him how the water levels were out in Indiana, Pennsylvania. The picture he texted back surprised me. While the water levels were higher than normal, the watercolor was an amazing shade of green. That was the only convincing I needed, I was fly fishing Yellow Creek on Sunday.
Read more