June 27, 2009 - - Lehigh River Report - Dodging Storms!

Oh the wind and rain. Add in lightning and some rising fish, and you've got an idea of what it was like on the big Lehigh Friday afternoon. Fortunately, we did not see the hail some of the areas around us received. Now that would have been fun. Really for the first 2/3s of the float we just rowed thru in order to get us down river and through the storm. A hard up-stream wind only made this effort a bit more difficult.

Once the rains ended, and the sun actually made an appearance, well, so did the fish - - by way of a double header. Both of these fish came on variations of buggers fished with either sink lines, and/or lots of split shot. The water is still running a good clip throughout the system. It was not soon after the double that we began to notice some smaller olives, along with the summer sulphurs. Once we got our rigs switched up, and dialed into dry fly mode, we began to notice some risers here and there. Nothing too heavy, but definitely more than enough to keep the boat's crew occupied well into the darkness. During this time of flinging dry's we managed to land a few, and tagged double that many.

All in all, not a bad outing considering the crazy weather all around us. The fishing should continue to hold up on the Lehigh, as long as we continue to get timely rains. Water temp was 68F at Bowmanstown at 3pm. It did not get any higher than that since the air temp dropped considerably with the rains.

June 24, 2009 - - Lehigh River Rescue

Some crazy stuff right there! Thankfully all are ok!! For ID purposes. The incident took place at an area called the 'ice dam,' which is adjacent to the Bowmanstown Treatment Plant and just upstream of the Rt. 895 Bridge. In the picture to the right, that is a PFBC sled on the left and hung up commercial rafts on the right. Lehighton gage was about 2,750cfs at the time of the rescue.

June 22, 2009 - - Martha's Vineyard Report

Our annual trip to Cape Poge out on Chappaquiddick has come and gone. It seems like each year this trip goes by in a blink of an eye! So much fun, and usually lots fish willing to eat our flies.

This year the trip was by far the coldest we've ever experienced. We were pretty much plagued with a steady east, northeast, north wind the entire time - - which had a bite to it. East Beach on Poge was not fishable with the fly. Which was too bad because we had heard from reliable sources that there were big fish around. The wind caused us to move around a lot. Each day the wind changed directions, and no pattern set-up over the course of the days we were on the Island. In fact you could tell the fishing was somewhat off due to the fact that we ran into few, if any other anglers.

Due diligence paid off though for the group. Everyone caught multiple fish, with most taping out to the low-to-mid-20s. Biggest fish was about 34-35". We caught bass and blues at the breach in Katama Bay. Hot fly for that location was an olive over white deceiver. Otherwise the go-to fly for the group was a sparse olive over white clouser. Lets just say clousers just catch fish!

One night we did have a flurry of action at the Gut on the outgoing. One big fish was lost on spin, but for the most part throwing black clousers or heavily weight black streamers on a 300-400 sink line did give up fish. The outgoing tide at the Gut combined with a strong east wind created a huge flush of water. Man was it ripping thru there!

One of our favorite spots out on Poge never did light up, though our last night it did provide some fast action of about 30 minutes with the group picking up a half dozen fish, along with a handful of bites.

Like I said a pattern never set up. We had to hunt for fish at each location we stopped. With most spots only giving up one or two fish. You had to work for each and every fish this year. Actually this was very similar to last year. And in fact I can say that the fishing in early June on the Vineyard has been in a decline since the late-90s, when we first started to hit the Island. Face it, I think we were spoiled with the action we had nightly back then. It was silly fishing!

One other note...we did not have the plover closures like we did last year. This allowed us to get to the Gut, which was closed off last year. Though we did hear that just a few days after we left the Island the birds started to hatch so roped off areas are now in place.

June 9, 2009 - - Lehigh - Bugs and Heads

The Magic Hour has been good to us! Bugs you will see in the air include - - caddis (all shapes/sizes/colors), olives (cornuta - 12-14s), sulphurs (the big boys! 14s), the smaller dorthea sulphurs, along with a sprinkling of big stones! And don't forget the accompanying spinners! There are a lot of fish looking up all throughout the system. Now is the time to get out there and explore the river. Pick a fishy looking spot, and hunt them down. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by what you will find.

Not sure if we are gonna be able to squeeze in another report by the end of the week. After that look for a lull in posting, due to our annual Vineyard trip. We are looking forward to this trip more than ever! Chappaquiddick might never be the same after we are done with it!!!