.....cabin fever having gotten to me, I headed up the road to see Mr. Fisher,
and headed off for an afternoon near Bellefonte, PA on Spring Creek. We
arrived around noon, and by 1 pm, the air was fairly full of olive mayfly
varieties, three to be exact. There were paler duns, around a size #24, some
dark olives of a #20 and larger still, a good number of #18 flies which were
a medium olive/grey with speckled legs and medium grey wings. This latter
bug seemed to be the food of choice, with hundreds coming down a series of
lanes to the feeding fish.
The fish were very picky, but all of us caught trout. I hooked 3 on wets
and several on dries, the best fly proving to be a sparsely hackled grey
olive fly, with a dark dun tail and medium barred dun hackle. The fish were
nicely colored PA browns, which nicely illustrated the difference between
"wild" trout and "streambred" trout. These were the latter, not hatchery
trout, but very used to the presence of fisherman.
It was good to fish with Softhackle Bruce, and meet Tom the Forester and
noted tyer Carl Gephart(sp?). It felt good to shake off the cobwebs and cast
to rising trout.
In a few short weeks, the Grannoms will start the parade of major
hatches......here's to 2008!
Tom