Not long ago, it dawned on me that I’d never caught a trout on a Royal Coachman, perhaps the most famous of all classic dry fly patterns. So I headed to a local Class A wild trout stream and purposed to change that. It was literally a downpour, but the trout were cooperative. Within a …
A new video on the Dark Skies YouTube channel shows us exploring a mountain stream for native brook trout using a Slate Drake pattern. Slate Drakes are unique in that they don’t hatch like typical mayflies. Instead of emerging from the water’s surface, they crawl up on to boulders and other structure in and …
One morning about 30 years ago, a workmate showed up with a smile the size of Broadway. I asked why he was as giddy as a teenage boy who just kissed the prettiest girl in high school. “I caught some steelhead in Twenty Mile last night,” he blurted. I was raised in Pennsylvania, just a …
Bluegills and other panfish on a fly rod are fun for kids, but they’re fun for adults, too. The nice thing about these species is their simplicity. If they’re hungry, they eat, and they’re generally not as selective as trout. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be picky. In fact, they can be downright infuriating, …
The sunshine got the best of me and I had no choice but to leave work early and head down the First Fork Valley. I got suited up and made my first cast a little before one o’clock, noticing that a few Blue Quills were coming off. Not enough to get excited about, though, …
Fishing First Fork Before, During, and After a Blue Quill Hatch Read More »
Winter fly fishing in Pennsylvania is all about simplicity. There’s no need to carry a wide range of flies to match a hatch – although we do have a couple of winter hatches, which I’ll discuss below. But this time of year, catching trout is more about using a handful of flies effectively than having …
Top 10 Flies for Winter Fly Fishing in Pennsylvania Read More »
A handful of palomino trout circled the pool in front of me. They went round and round, all five of them, searching their watery confines for a cool place to rest before eventually stationing themselves in fighter plane formation where the riffles dumped into the pool. A few minutes later, they repeated the process. …
Getting Skunked with Dignity: Early Summer Midges Read More »
The evening began on the lower end of First Fork’s Delayed Harvest section. The afternoon rain had cleared into a beautiful evening – a little too beautiful, in fact, as the sun beat down on the water, and at times it felt downright hot. I picked up two fat rainbows on a Sexy Walt …
I caught two trout on my first two casts before I realized there was a full scale Blue Quill hatch going on and trout were rising all around me. The rises were subtle, which is why I hadn’t noticed them when I first waded out into the stream. And then I was distracted by …
True story. A few days ago, I was fishing with my buddy Dylon Hoelzli on Elk Creek near Erie, PA, and overhead a group of guys talking about how could there be so many fish in the streams, yet so few of them willing to bite. These five guys were bantering back and forth and …
