Fly fishing Little Chartier's Creek

Finally made it out on the water since moving to Southwestern PA about a month ago.  After getting back into fly fishing the last few years in Colorado I decided to keep it up once I got here.  I will have to admit, I was a little worried about not knowing the water at all/ knowing what patterns to fish.  I am not the greatest at matching the hatches that are coming off so I figured that I would have a lot of trouble and would be in for a disappointing day until I fished a few more days and got in the hang of the area.

Wrong I was!  I had a real good day with 5 rainbows to the net as well as a few fingerling rainbows that were more than eager to take my midge.  After only about 30 mins on the stream I stopped in a real nice hole just to the bottom of a riffle and on my second cast I hooked up the this guy:

My first Pennsylvania Trout!

Not a great picture but I was fishing by myself and didn't want to keep him out of the water for too long.  He was about 8-9 inches so nothing incredible but it was my first Pennsylvania trout so I was happy enough to snap a photo. After that guy I hooked up to two more in that hole and then moved on.  I was fishing a two fly setup with a red juju-bee on the bottom and a beadhead pheasant tail up top.  The Juju-bee was where I had all my strikes all day and though I switched out the top fly a few times it didn't seem to make a difference.  Later in the afternoon, I think I hit a pocket of the smallest fish in the river with three of these guys coming up. 

Dinner?

 

 At this point I was ready to call it a day so I wrapped it up and headed home.  It was really nice to head to a completely foreign water and have some success.  Maybe I am actually starting to figure out this fishing thing after all.  Little Chartiers Creek was a decent waterway but even for mid week it was pretty crowded.  I must have seen at least 10-12 other people out fishing on the short section of the creek I was on.  I was the only one throwing flys, everyone else looked like they were using a spinning setup but it seemed like a nice piece of local water.  I do think I will check out some of the coldwater rivers and streams as I might have a little more luck on those.  But for early in spring before the water warms up this was a pretty nice little spot.  Definitely worth checking out.