10-8-23 Picking Pockets
Found some time to do a little daytime fishing so I headed to a PA freestone. I met up with my friend Adam who recently moved back up north from Texas. We got to the stream at sunrise and were the first ones in the parking lot. We rigged up and headed to the water, flows were a little high after the recent rainfall and water temps were in the upper 50s.
We started out fishing two runs, I took the upper and left Adam to fish the lower. We both connected on browns within the first few casts. With the higher flows, I focused on the outside seams and used a heavier perdigon on point with a small olive emerger on a tag. Ended up picking 5 trout in the top run, all of them were hanging in the outside seam close to the bank. We were about to move downstream 20 yards into one of my favorite sections that usually holds some bigger trout, but to my surprise a guide and client quietly moved into that area and we never even heard them. We gave them plenty of space and moved down about 100 yards below them. As we were about to start fishing I looked down and saw another fisherman moving upstream. He was spin fishing with a giant rapala, I was curious to see if he hooked into anything sizeable but he hadn’t.
We continued to move down into some very fast pocket water, seemed to be the only open section of river that we could walk to. With the higher flows, there was more real estate to fish than normal. I stuck with the heavier perdigon and did my best to set up my drifts with a solid cast so that I was immediately in contact. This strategy worked well and I was able to land 4 more fish in the next section. I gave Adam a heavier perdigon as well and that seemed to do the trick.
We continued to work our way downstream and just about every section that looked like it would hold a trout did, and they were hungry. I would look ahead from time to time to see how Adam was doing and just about every other time I looked he had a fish on. I focused on fishing all of the water, even if it didn’t look very fishing, and a lot of those places still held fish. A few times I caught myself laughing in disbelief when a nice wild brown was holding in what seemed to be a few inches of water off the bank.
With the higher flows, I had to wade a little more aggressively and cast a little further to get to some of the water on the far bank. I slipped on a rock and used my wading staff to catch my balance. It held up just long enough to regain my balance before snapping. Fortunately, I didn’t go for a swim, at least this time.
Adam and I both had to be back around lunch, so we stopped fishing around 11 and headed back to the parking lot. It was a great morning with a lot of action in the pocket water. Most of the fish were smaller wild browns, but what they lacked in size, they made up for in energy and beauty.