September 24, 2007 - Salt Report

The salt still remains kind of slow for our primary predator fish - bluefish and bass...but if you are looking for trash-fish, then IBSP was the place to be over the weekend. For a stretch it was close to a sea robin per cast kind-of-day. They must been staging for a migration or something because they were thick! With the gin clear water, you could actually see them follow your fly to the rocks, and lunge for it - most likely following it all the way in. At other times, it was a few strips and you were tight. Yeah, they are considered trash but when nothing else is happening, you can not complain about the hit and bend in the rod. In fact they were quite aggressive with numerous casts having multiple swings and missed on the retrieve.

One of the many sea robins that fell for a white deceiver at the the end of a 350 grain line.

Meanwhile back here in PA...we need rain! Everything is low - and sickly looking. Looking into the crystal ball, the extended forcast does not hold much in the way of a good soaker. Time will tell.

September 17, 2007 - Salt!

Talk about bait. Mullet galore!! Except for very little predators on them - cocktail blues were the only game in town, with just a few nipping at the heels of the mullet. It has been many years since such large ocean-bound rafts of mullet have been seen. Does this bode-well for the fall?? Time will tell.

September 15, 2007 - Walter Drawdown

So long summer pool. The Corps has begun their draw down of Walter to its 'winter pool level' of 1,300' above sea level. Sometime in mid-October the process should be complete. Along the way we will continue to see whitewater releases...prolly to the tune of 1,000cfs each day of the every-other-weekend event. In fact there is whitewater this weekend -- Sept 15-16.

The chart to the right shows the draw down of Francis E Walter Reservoir. Look for a sharper and larger drop in the level after this weekend due to a whitewater event. Also remember that volume of water per foot decreases as the lake gets lower. At 1,310' one foot of water is approx .04 billion gallons. At 1,365' one foot of water is approx .18 billion gallons.

This chart is taken from the USGS site.

September 10, 2007 - Lehigh Gorge Wade

Over the weekend FFPA tried to do a bit of Lehigh River sampling, where it flows through the Lehigh River Gorge. Unfortunately the water was on the warm side - lower-70s at mid-afternoon - and the weather did not cooperate much at all. An intense tropical-like rainstorm moved in at about 5pm and sent us hustling back to the vehicle. We even witnessed a bit of hail. Despite the cut-short outing we were able to fish some really impressive trout water. Structure-wise the Lehigh Gorge is trout paradise. The fish did not disappoint either. We managed to pull one trout, which was brought to hand quickly. A bunch of smallmouth were also hooked and landed. By far the bug of choice in this stretch is the stonefly. The shucks are everywhere! All the smallies took a brown bugger.

Treacherous wading.

Roadless area upstream of Rockport.

Wild brown ate a wired stone.

September 6, 2007 - Respect Wild Trout

Just because we are in September, and the nights are bit longer and the low-temps are somewhat sleep-friendly, it does not mean that our trout waters are not at stressful levels. For instance streams like Penns and Valley are critically low-levels, and are probably at lethal levels for hooked-and-played-and-released trout. Just take a look at what has recently been done out in the Rocky Mountain States and all the closures that have occurred due to the bone-dry conditions and intense heat. The water temps out there easily reached levels comparable to what we are still experiencing here in PA. Now our PFBC won't close our waters, due to their belief that closing waters brings more un-needed publicity to them, but a little respect by us fisherman can insure most fish make it through these tough times. We politely urge you leave these waters alone until we get some consistently cooler weather and/or a decent shot of water-cooling precipitation. So stay away, and hit Spring or Big Fishing if you are in central-PA or one of the eastern PA tailwaters if you need to fish the eastern part of the state.