10-28-23 PA Freestone

Another early morning trip to PA for some wild fish. I left my house around 4AM so that I could have a little time to night fishing. We had a little bit of colder weather the day before, but the high was supposed to be back up to 80 degrees. The flows were low and water was crystal clear. My friend Jim met up with me and we were pretty excited to do a little night fishing to start.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we only had one hit on streamers in the dark. As the sun started to light up the trees, we switched over to nymphing. Given the water conditions, I defaulted to fishing light 6X tippet and small flies. I put on a size 18 olive nymph as a tag with a Tasmanian devil as my point fly.

I started working a fast run, I started casting upstream toward the bank I was standing on, and worked casting across to the other side. I was able to pick up one fish right above me in a slower seam and another one on the far bank. Couldn’t get any hits in the middle of the faster run. I did adjust the weight of my fly, to make sure I was getting down deep enough and keeping my nymphs moving at the right pace. That still didn’t work so after another 15 minutes of working that stretch, I decided to move on. Overall the fishing was pretty slow for the first hour.

We moved downstream and started working another fast run, Jim was able to pick up a fish on the swing at the end of his drift. Given the lack of insect activity, I was surprised that swinging a nymph worked, but that’s all part of fishing, you never know until you try.

We continued to cover water and as the air temperatures picked up, so did the fishing activity. The small flies, olive nymph and tasmanian devil seemed to be working well so I stuck with them. The only changes I made were with the bead sizes to make sure I was getting the drifts I wanted when the water depth changed between spots.

Wild browns

More and more, I’m focusing on getting in contact immediately which all starts with a good cast. I’m always trying to work on something and that was my focal point for this outing. It’s always a great feeling when you catch a fish almost immediately as your flies enter the water. Who knows how many fish I’ve missed over the years because it would take time for me to get into contact.

Nothing too crazy happened that day, mostly just small wild brown trout. We picked up a lot of fish down low and we needed to go deep to get them. A nice slow presentation with a vertical sighter was the ticket. I had to leave by 10:30am and got a nice surprise right in the last run, a tiger trout decided to take the 18 olive nymph which was a great way to end.

Nice surprise Tiger Trout