Opening day

Sat March 31st was opening day in the southeastern part of the state so as ususal I met up with my father and my nephews to do some fishing. I don't use spinnning gear at all anymore with the exception of opening day. My father even went out and bought me a new ultralight outfit last year. I can say with a good degree of certainty that I'll will never go back to a spinning rod on a regular basis but I don't mind doing it for one day a year besides everyone gets a kick out of seeing me getting my hands dirty with corn and dare I say it WORMS!!!!!!
The stream we fish is basically a put and take fishery but man did they load it up with fish. All of the kids had a ball and caught plenty of fish and after a little while I did some fishing myself and it was pretty easy. I think I hooked 20 fish in as many casts I don't know what the final tally was because I don't keep track of these things but it had to be an obscene amount.
After all that I decided to go elsewhere and cleanse my soul of all that business and get in some flyfishing. I fished another stream with the fly rod for about 2 hours with only one fish to show for it. I don't know about my soul but my hands were clean.

Good day

Made it out to the Little Lehigh for a few hours and did really well. It was cold, about 35 degrees, but sunny and calm. The water was slightly off color but definitely fishable , I'm sorry to say I didn't take the temperature.I started the day fishing egg patterns just because they seem to work for me when I really want to catch a fish and they came through big time, it actually got to the point where I started to feel a little guilty so I decided to head to the fly shop ,located right on the bank of the stream, to get a cup of coffee and to get warm. Well I ended up buying a new Apex vice and some tying materials to go with my coffee. After a nice chat with the owner I set out again and decided to try some streamers and although I didn't land any fish I did have quite a few swipe at them and hooked one that got off. As fun as this was I wanted to catch a fish on the surface so I started walking the stream looking for risers and it didn't take very long as I found a few rising about a hundred yards upstream. I couldn't see any insects in the air or on the water and being as I forgot my seine I just put on a midge emerger and crossed my fingers. Long story short forty five minutes later they were still rising and I was on my tenth fly change when I finally saw the answer floating close enough for me to see that it was a #24 BWO. I tried a couple emerger patterns with just a few close inspections from the trout for my efforts. I then switched to a thorax style pattern and that did the trick as I took each riser from the pool. Great day all around. Until next time.

Skunked

Met up with Dwayne and Scott to fish Saucon Creek today for the first outing of the new year. I thought it was going to be a nice day but it was windy and cold and it was even snowing for awhile. When the wind died down it was actually pretty nice and it felt really good to be out and get over my cabin fever. We fished from about 11:00 until about 3:00 and between the three of us only a couple a fish were hooked but none were landed. There was no hatch of anykind and I didn't see a single rise so we fished streamers and nymphs all day. Opening day of trout is coming in a few weeks wich will give us a few more options instead of just the special regulation water and hopefully it should be nice and warm by then. I probably won't be fishing until then so I guess I'll just try to finish stocking my fly boxes.

The boys

Me and the boys up at the Beaverkill in upstate NY. Left to right Scott,Dwayne,Dan, me and my dad Mike.