After a busy day hanging out with my kids, I called a friend to see if he was available to do a little night fishing. Storms were forecasted to hit the area around 3AM so we decided to hit the water at 11PM and fish until we got rained out. He lives 2 hours away in Pennsylvania so we met at a stream in PA that’s almost an equal drive for both of us. This is a wild trout fishery, however it definitely gets stocked in other sections, just not the area we fished.

My friend Dave and I decided to load up the drift boat and head north for a night float. It was going to be a much cooler night and almost no moon, which worked out great. Based on the flows, I decided to run a floating fly line with about a 7’ leader, which is really just a 7’ piece of 0X. Running a sinking line at night is tough, a lot of obstacles you can’t see, especially when the flows are on the lower side. The sinking lines tend to wrap around every shallow rock, especially if I try to do a slower retrieve. I also feel like I get a lot more takes in the upper foot of water when I fish at night. I have fished sinking lines at night, but I just seem to do better on a floating line in the dark.

It was nice to get a little break from the summer heat with a family trip up in the Catskills. I had time to sneak away early in the morning to fish some areas that I used to frequent very often. We were staying close to a stream that New York stopped stocking a few years ago. Most of the wild fish I caught in the stream were rainbows, but on this trip, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of wild brown trout, most were in the 6-10” range. On a side note, I think the wild rainbows on this stream are pound for pound some of the hardest fighting fish.

The summer heat back home brought trout fishing trips to a halt, however an unexpected surprise in Oregon led me on a pretty epic adventure. Sometimes you randomly cross paths with people and it almost seems like it was all meant to happen, this is definitely one of those times.

Planned a great day of night fishing, wanted to be on the water around 10:00PM and do a nice 8 mile float. Conditions were great, no moon, just had some rain and overcast skies, it was going to be perfect….Until I told my wife and she “reminded me” about a concert she was going to the night I planned on leaving. Apparently I knew about this concert, but that’s a topic for a different blog.

Whichever rod I had in my hand was used for everything, streamers, dry flies, tight lining, or indicator fishing, it didn’t matter, that was the only rod I had. If I wanted to switch from streamers to dry flies, I’d make a few adjustments to the leaders if necessary, but that was about it. After taking the fly fishing class at Penn State during my undergrad years, I learned

I’m not sure why this topic frustrates me more than anything else, but it does. Perhaps it’s because people are searching for some top secret leader formula that will help them catch more fish. Or maybe it’s the angler that thinks he needs every measurement down to the sixteenth of an inch for it to work

After two great days in NY, it was time to head home. Fortunately, I knew of a great stream that was right on our way home and decided to stop and fish that with my father in law. The kids had a play date planned until 5:00PM so I didn’t feel too bad fishing again…

After a long night of socializing around the campfire the night before, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to get out of bed at 5am to fish on my own before the guides arrived at 10. But I decided to suck it up, chug a water, and get my waders…

On our way down the river, we got to a slower section of water and the guide spotted some stripers. It was awesome watching them a few feet below the surface on the hunt for food. He had some streamer rods already rigged up, he handed me

Met up with my dad for a morning of fishing for the first time since last season. He recently purchased a euro rod and reel so we set him up and tested it out. He got the Grey’s Fin combo in a 10’ 3 weight. It came with a euro line and I set him up

Left the house around 4:15am and headed for PA in search of wild brown trout in a smaller mountain stream. The morning was pretty foggy, I wasn’t planning on seeing much surface activity so I started out tight lining. The stream is small, with a lot of gradient, so lots of little pockets. I fished a perdigon

Decided to fish a freestone in PA where there’s a large diversity of fish. Stripers, shad, bass and trout are all likely possibilities when fishing here. Because of this, I started out with streamers, even though the water was very low and clear. Jigging a sculp snack streamer along the bottom produced quite a few stripers in this

Took a quick road trip to Pittsburgh for a friend’s 40th birthday party and decided to make a pitstop and do some fishing along the way. The water was low and clear for this time of year, but bugs were heavy. Even saw some green drakes, which I’ve never seen before on this particular stream. I was on the water at 6am