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fishing report - potter county penna. kettle creek. mark, curt , eric and i left pittsburgh at 630 for the five hour drive pulling the campers.
wed afternoon - dead! i skunked! no fish rising. quit early. but we had a great dinner - clams and mussels boiled over the fire with grouper on the coleman grill and pan seared tuna on the gas burners in the camper (curt works for a major seafood wholesaler and they were as fresh as they get in this part of the country)
thursday a.m.-cold! no hatch to speak of. i picked up a few on nymphs hendrickson and big stonefly. i caught several of the very large stoneflies (i'll be posting pictures to have them identified) that i have never seen before in penna. saw some bluequills (paralept) and some hendricksons a few march browns and an apple green stonefly throughout the day but very few rising fish. i caught 3 of the 4 risers that i saw. delmonicos (eric always brings terrific steaks)on the camp fire for dinner
thursday evening - an awesome paralept spinner fall. took a while to figure out what the wanted but after that eric and i caught almost every rising fish in the two pools that we fished up until dark. that night i tied b.q. spinners (regular and hi-viz with a small florescent parapost) until i almost fell asleep at the vise.
friday morning a minor hatch - bluequills and hendricksons and a few rising fish. dissapointed but i got my fair share. more than mark or curt fishing nymphs! eric left to go turkey hunting and mark and curt had chili for dinner while i stayed out. they missed it! awesome bluequill spinner fall and i landed 14 fish until the bats chased me off of the water when i couldn't see the fly anymore. got to the camper and ate the chili in my truck as i listened to the second and third period of the pens/canadiens game on satelite radio!
saturday morning - the best hatch i have seen up there in the past few seasons! nobody fishing my favorite pool (they had stocked several miles down stream and i guess everybody was chasing the hatchery trucks!) i had fish rising all around me! about 7am the paralept started. i switched flies several times and wound up catching them on #18 floating nymph, #20 transitional emerger, #20 paraloop emerger. the paraloop was by far the most effective fly. then they stopped taking my b.q. flies around 930 but there were still tons of rising fish. i noticed more and more subvaria on the water so i started all over again with redquills catching fish on #16 floating nymphs, transitionals, cdc sparkleduns and again the best fly was a paraloop. we were supposed to pack up the campers and leave by eleven but i couldn't leave the risers. i got 19 fish and not another fisherman in sight. as the hatch petered out i saw 2 last rising fish and caught the first one and stopped - again ending a trip with a fish on the final cast of the day and leaving one last rising fish to catch next time.
i got back to the campground and mark and curt were already packed up and ready to go. they understood my situation and weren't mad. they were kind enough to help me load and rig my camper and we were both on the road and heading home by 1pm.
holy cow - did i just give a "spence-like" rambling report?
tony

Tony,

Not bad, man! You know we love fish reports...I think you are better at staying on point than Spence and we all know we could do without his odd references to obscure philosophers etc...I just prevented him from posting his essay on Soren Kierkegaard's, "Either/Or" and "The Concept of Anxiety" and how they relate to fly selection when astream...Wow! That was close!

It sounds like the bugs are in full swing here in Michigan and there in PA...Good news! If it continues this way I'll have Brown Drakes and the little Sulphur E dorothea dorothea for sure at the end of May.

I'm heading down stairs to tie and wait for the Wings game at 8:00...

Thanks!

Spence