Pocono Report

Chaz & I hit some Pocono streams on Monday. We did well on a private section of the Tobyhanna, which we both fished back in early July (see July 29 post). Chaz hit some pocket water downstream from a dam. After a few creek chubbs & panfish, he was rewarded with a nice rainbow, who couldn't resist a dry-fly gliding through the pockets & swirling currents of this stream. It may very well be his first really nice trout on a dry, but I could be wrong. I knew he must have been fishing pretty hard, because I saw neither hide nor hair of him for several hours. I was hoping that that was a sign that he was busy catching fish! Meanwhile, I was investigating a section where we had done very well last time. It is a run between two old bridge abutments, the remaining ruins of the original dam. The water was a bit lower than it had been, as was expected, but not significantly so. Chaz had fished this section only a week or so before with his dad & said it wasn't as productive as it had been. I wondered if the fish had moved up nearer to the dam, or into the man-made plunge pool below the dam. I tied on a tandem nymph & indicator rig, getting some drifts through the run. A somewhat large creek chubb & some small panfish obliged me, but nothing more. I headed upstream & began fishing the deep concrete plunge pool below the dam, and was I immediately rewarded with a hefty rainbow. "Aha!", I thought. "So they really were in there, after all." I was able to land five nice rainbows, 2 of which were in the 16"-18" range, as well as three in the 13"-14" range. All had nice color & girth to them. A few more may have been bigger still, breaking off my tippet at the fly. So, they have a souvenir from our battle! I needed to change tactics here, though, due to the sheer depth of the pool. First off, the tandem rig & the indicator had to be dispensed with. The first fish (which nailed the tail fly) unfortunately got foul hooked on the dropper fly. Also, the indicator became a hindrance, because it prevented me from reeling in more line to land the fish, although I did actually land it. The tactic was simple: putting more weight on the leader, casting a tuck cast straight up into the current, in or below the white water, or quartering upstream into the seam, followed by a quick mend, & following the leader with the rod tip for the rest of the drift. The key here was getting that fly down deep. I experimented & found that when I did not get it down deep, I almost never got strikes, but when I did, I almost always did. Also, lifting the rod as it finished the drift was key in getting strikes, at times.

A better method would be to use a sinking line in this section, or at least a sink-tip, which I did not have with me at the time. This would have certainly ensured that the fly got down consistently to the bottom & thus, to the trout below. I believe that there were some big brownies down there, too (they were in the creek in July), but I did not catch any. Maybe one of those bruisers that broke off my fly were one of those big guys. Also, the fly of choice was a caddis larva pattern in olive or tan. Those trout slammed that fly with abandon.

Part 2 of the day began too late & ended too early, thanks to Yours Truly. We wanted to hit the Big Bushkill up near Resica Falls. I fished this stream in early May. This area is stocked in the spring & it is open to the public, but only fly-fishing is permitted here. I had some good success here & this was a challenging place to fish, as well. But, the memory is starting to fade in the Chief-man. On the way, I drove up the wrong road, with Chaz following me. I'm glad he's a patient guy, because we had to do some major backtracking before we got back to the correct road. Finally, we arrived at the stream, but the sun was sinking fast. Again, like the Toby, this stream had less water, but that was to be expected. Chaz wanted to use a nymphing/indicator rig, I was going with a rusty spinner dry-fly setup. Lots of boulders here. When you arrive in this spot, you are standing on the top of one of several large, flat boulders. From here, you can make your casts into the current below. Below in the stream, there is a flume, through which some nice, cold oxygenated water flows. Below the flume, the current flows into a wide, calm section of the stream. A large boulder juts up in the middle of the stream. This area is very deep & has tons of submerged rocks & boulders, which prevents wading. This part of the stream almost appears as a mini-lake within the stream. It is almost perfectly round here & the banks are all formed by rock. The only way to fish in this immediate area (besides fishing from the flat boulders above) is to climb down to some smaller rocks & boulders below & try to cast up into the current seam, which meanders its way down, around the big boulder in the middle. It's a bit tricky here, because you cannot wade closer & some trees behind will grab your fly if you are not cautious on your back cast. In the spring, I saw rises all throughout this area, tan caddis being the fly of choice. The stream funnels its way slowly downstream, as the large "pot-belly" shaped lake-within-a-creek gives way to the classic, mountain stream once again. Downstream, some more boulders & pocket water & some small falls.

Although we didn't land any fish, we saw a few splashy rises near an undercut in a boulder that serves as part as the stream bank across from us. That makes sense, because the water eddies around in that spot, delivering food like a revolving smorgasbord. And you have all that oxygenated water from the flume above. If I were a trout, I'd hang out there, too.

Upstream of the flume section, you have plenty of promising, boulder-strewn, classic-mountain pocket water. We ran out of light, and couldn't see the tippet anymore when we tried to tie on a new fly, so we left this spot for another day. I'm thinking that with a bit more rain, and some cooler fall temps, this spot might be worth checking out again in the near future.