Finally, finally, I got to escape the confines of house, job etc, and head
to my local small stream. And, for April, it was small. Water is low,
warming pretty early, but still around 50 degrees. This stream is stocked at
it's lower end, but upstream carries a decent population of native
browns(few large). It had been billed as a day of showers, but turned out to
be warmish(65-70 degrees) and a bit muggy. I saw some bugs, mainly grannom
caddis and small blue quills, but there was a Hendrickson or two around. The
fish were less than enthusiastic,though.

I waded in, crossed and headed upstream to a small bridge. It felt great to
see the budding trees, see the activity from robins, doves, sparrows and
various furry critters. I started out fishing downstream with a pair of
wets. A green/olive submerger brought 3 fish to me: a couple of small
natives and a larger, stocked rainbow. A hare's ear nymph yielded a couple
more. By now, I had long since passed the spot I had parked, so decided to
fish back up with dries.

This time of year, my fallback is always the Coyote Ugly dry, and I chose a
#16. It brought a couple more browns, one decent sized, out of deeper chops.
A change to a blue quill, and another to a #14 Hendrickson brought no
interest, and frankly, I only saw 5 fish rise the whole day.
A return to the Ugly got me a splashy miss, but that was the last trout I
came near. Still, a nice start to the year. Off to Penn's on Wednesday, and
I'm hoping that the called-for three days of rain(Mon-Wed) don't
materialize.......

Tom