First things first – this is outing #11 with the Orvis Pro Waders. Still loving them, no complaints. Now, back to the fishing! We got our first real taste of spring today. It ended up being about 66 degrees come mid afternoon and it felt so good. The insects must of liked it too because there was a decent amount of midges coming off the water today as the sun warmed it up. I believe I even found a Isonychia Nymph. It was long and had a yellow stripe down its thorax and abdomen.
I hit my first Keystone select water on the Pennsylvania border. For those that don’t know what that means. The Keystone Select Stocked Trout Waters program provides anglers with an exciting opportunity to fish for larger trout. Under the program, approximately 10,000 large trout, 2-to 3-years old and measuring between 14 to 20 inches, are distributed among these select waters under the Delayed Harvest Artificial Lures Only special regulations and one water managed with Miscellaneous Special Regulations.
In other words, big stocked fish. We are lucky to have a handful of Keystone select waters within a 2 hour drive of the SEPA region, which is a nice opportunity to catch bigger then average stocked trout.
I ended up getting on the stream this morning around 8am and there were already a few guys out. I was able to find a pool on the upper section to myself with some fish while I awaited for my friend Nick to arrive.
It didn’t take long to spot the big blob of gold in the water which leads to the first, or technically second fish to the net being a 21″ THICK Golden Rainbow. If 21″ in length doesn’t get you, the girth of this thing should. It must of been around 10-12″ around if I had to take a guess.
I actually rolled the fish first, as seen in the video. But I left him alone to settle down for about 20 minutes, all while catching a few other small bows and then gave a shot at him again. And as expected, he ate again. Both times on the black and blue hares ear I tied the night prior.
Nick finally arrived and it wasn’t long until he started getting into some fish in the pool as well. After about 30 minutes we decided it was time to venture down stream. We noticed the same Golden i hooked earlier sitting by his lonesome in the tail out of the stretch. He was a sitting duck in this section. Nick gave his go at him and got him to take again! After netting him, we walked him down stream to a bigger deeper pool to release him.
The action shut off hard for the remaining part of the day. It was hard to get a hit consistently. Interestingly enough, a large fish decided to snap Nicks rod. It must of been a defect based on where it snapped. Luckily I had a few extra rigs in my car and Nick was able to get regeared up for the rest of the day.
We picked up a few more hogs before we ventured downstream to check out a few more fishy looking sections.
The last pool we got to was a hard current to fish. It had a fast channel of rapids that was deep, probably 4 feet. Then along side of that seam was a deep still pool with a back current with a slow swirl that was probably 5+ feet deep.
We struggled to hook up with any fish in this pool and decided to call it a day at this point. Good day overall, until next time!