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:
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| 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.
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| 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.
