From Our Good Friends Over at Fishbeer.com

Guys Dig Her, Fish Fear Her

At the risk of destroying the internet with the concentrated powers of the awesomeness of fishbeer.com, here's a shot you don't see every day.

It's not too hard to still find beauty in this world if you're lucky enough to know the right places to look for it. Fly fishing images are like anything else in that regard, some of them are priceless and some of them are worthless. The above image, captured by fellow blogger Matt Dunn over at fishbeer.com, knocked my socks off the first time I saw it and it would be an affront to the art of photography not to share it with fellow bothers and sisters of the Angle. In compositional aspects, it definitely fits in the former category of priceless. The lovely young lady's name is Erika and and was a good enough sport to join Matt on the river one day for some not so serious fly fishing in the Hoosier State. Evidently, she's a wet wading, fish catching mo-chine. The best I can tell, the printing on her "tackle bag" says More fun without plastics. You go girl!

Click here for the full story.

I've had the good fortune to enjoy the fruits of Matt's blogging skills for a couple of years now. It's been fun to watch his talented writing style, sense of humor and camera skills develop, merge and compliment his love for fishing and beer (not necessarily in that order). His humble "aw shucks" attitude is for real and as refreshing as a frosty mug of Poe Paddy Porter after a long day of piscatorial pursuits. The guy knows a thing or two about malt liquor too. When Matt talks about beer, even E.F. Hutton stops to listen.

If you find a lot of "mainstream" fly fishing beer blogs & forums to be soporific yawners , then click on over to fishbeer.com. and we promise you won't be disappointed. WRWT will even offer a double, no triple, your money back guaruntee on this one.

Thanks Matt & Erika.

Two Days in the Valley

Around Spring Mills

Summers here. And love it or hate it, there's no denying that the weather gods have smiled on us so far this year. Of course it helps to be a fisherman or farmer to appreciate the cool rainy weather that most ordinary people around here have already grown weary of enduring. Both limestone and freestone streams across the region are bank full of cold water and I haven't seen the farms & fields of central Pennsylvania look this lush since the summers of '03-'04. While it's true that prime hatch time is waning here at the tail end of June, that doesn't necessarily mean the fishing is any less satisfying. I had two free days this past weekend to cram in as much fishing & wading as my endlessly aching back could tolerate and when an opportunity like that is knocking, I give it my attention. That's just the way I roll.

Summertime Brown Trout

A cool front had passed through the region on Friday night and brought with it another shot of moisture, refreshingly cool temperatures and bluebird skies. A small limestone tributary of Penn's Creek was my first choice after dropping into the valley from the Seven Mountains. The flow was perfect with a temperature of 56F at noon and decent numbers of Blue Quills, summer olives and morning sulphers emerging up in the rocky narrows. Even a few rising fish greeted me on this stream that is notorious for it's persnickety nature and the propensity of it fish to feed subsuface even in the face of a decent hatch. How dare they! Two of them soon fell victim to a olive emerger and a Letort Cricket respectively. That ought to teach 'em. But it was the nymph fishing that was the real ticket to angling bliss this weekend. Small nymphs typical of the summer season on our Pennsylvania limestoners took one nice wild brown after another from the deeper lenses in the riffles and pocketwater that were still shaded by the steep walls of the narrows. The fish ran from 10" to 15" and provided excellent sport on a 7' 4-weight bamboo fly rod. Fishing eventually slowed for the day when the sun reached it's zenith and shown straight down on the water. It was time to move on in search of more shaded fly water but I would return to this same stream the following morning with much the same results.

And now for something completely different, as they say...

Painter Run

Dry Fly fishing spoken here.

Painter Hollow

"They call it Painter Hollow because the loggers found a big mountain lion up here -used to call them "painters"- and they tracked him in the snow with dogs and hunted him down and shot him and skinned him out and wore the hides for jackets. Yessir, that's the real story behind Painter Hollow, they tells me. "

Painter Run Brook Trout

The Transfer

Hemlock & Rhododendron

Hemlock Trout

All life is fragile.
Just ask anyone who regularly drives I-80.

Mountaintop

Penn's Creek Below the Forks

Saturday evening found me on Penn's Creek in plenty of time for the evening rise. Most of the major insect hatches were history already for this season but there were still fishable numbers of Cahills and small sulphers on the water. A suprising number of large perla stonflies were in the air and returning to the water to deposit future progenys -they went unmolested by the trout. Once the sun was off the water the fish began to show themselves on the surface. Lamentably it was their backs they were showing me and not their snouts. I pretty much suck at fishing, as well as most other things, but I suck even more when it comes to fishing emergers. Eventually I got 'em figured out enough to take about 1/2 dozen fish on a size #16 Flatlander Flies© CDC & biot emerger but none of them were over a foot long although they were fat as sausages. A couple of better fish began rising under some riparian fauna just as darkness was starting to envelope the river but I put 'em both down with sloppy presentations before calling it a night. It had been a long day already and a man can only catch so many fish.

The following day the weather forecast called for yet another moisture laden cool front to push it's way across the state. I was giddy as a schoolgirl on prom night at the thought of real blue winged olives rafting down Penn's Creek under cloudy, drizzly skies. Welp, I was all tooled up and ready but my date for the big dance never showed up. I was stood up by Drunella lata and it wasn't the first nor last time I'm sure. I decided to push my way on home but not before bagging a few more browns on a Stimulator/beadhead combo meal.

Winklebleck Mountain

One of those prefect top 10 summer days in central Pennsylvania. The kind of day where you say to yourself that you wish you were alive.

Around Woodward

Just ask these folks.

So get out and kick it hard while you still can, all you dudes & dudettes. You know who you are. Yeah you right there, all the way in the back. Light a fire under it!

Grumpy Old Bastards, Ph.D's & 7X

Savage River - 130 CFS

Sorry for the delay between postings, but it's been a couple of weeks since I've been able to get out on any kind of water at all with a fly rod in my hands. I hope this post makes up for it. This past weekend I had the excellent fortune to be invited to spend a few days fishing the Savage River in western Maryland with my good friends and fellow Pro Staffers, Glen & Mike. To say I was looking forward to this trip would be an understatement. We haven't explored any new water here at WRWT since last August when we drove across the Judith Basin 'round Lewistown, Montana so we've been sort of jonesin' for some new material. Even if it means another stinkin' long road trip...

When I think of Maryland I think of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore Orioles, Old Bay Seasoning, Francis Scott Key & the Star Spangled Banner, Edgar Allan Poe and the best blue crabs (and crab cakes) on the planet. The thought of catching 3 wild brown trout in my first 20 minutes on the water never occurred to me.

First some quick background info: The Savage River races through an extraordinarily scenic, quiet and steeply eroded valley between two of the tallest mountains in Maryland. The maps may say Maryland on them but the topography & relief are really the same as neighboring West Virginia. The lower part of the river flows out of the bottom of the Savage River Reservoir and is a high gradient tailwater fishery for 4 miles downstream to it's confluence with the North Branch of the Potomac. It's averages 50-60 feet wide and it's just filthy lousy with gorgeous wild brown & brook trout.

Rainbow Cottage

Our home base for this weekend would be Savage River Outfitters' with it's fine lodging conveniently located right on the banks of the river. Owned and operated by Mike Evans, Mike went out of his way to see that we had a great time, offering friendly advice & help, making sure we had everything we needed and always pointing us in the right direction. Just like Jonas Price of the Feathered Hook Inn & Fly Shop up in Coburn, Pa., Mike is another one of those refreshing guys to meet who absolutely restores your faith in the current state of the fly fishing biz. Nice to know there are still guys like this around.

Here's Mike (L) giving Mike Evans (R) the GPS coordinates of all Greg G's favorite secret fishing hot spots back in Pennsylvania. Pay no attention to that West Virginia Mountaineers flag in the background.

Will He Make It?

Real men don't need a wading staff!

The weather turned out to be delightful for the entire weekend with a warm, slightly humid air mass eventually giving way to clear blue skies and low humidity. Water levels out of the dam had dropped from 300 CFS during the previous week down to a perfect fishing level of 130 CFS on the day of our arrival. The water temperatures were typicially 48F in the morning and 52F in late afternoon under this flow regime. Storage capacity in the lake pool behind the dam was at 100 percent.

Fish were already actively rising upon our arrival on Friday afternoon under cloudy skies to a bountiful supply of sulphers, Cahills, March Browns and caddis flies . Mike confirmed our suspicions of the good fishing to come with a glowing dry fly report from earlier in the day. If my first day on the river was any indication of how well things would go over the next few days then I was in for a real treat. Not too long after entering my first pool I was tight to a nice wild brown trout that inhaled my CDC & biot sulpher emerger like it had been waiting all season for one of those delicious looking Flatlander Flies© to come drifting by. My second fish was an even larger brown that walked me up and down that pool twice before finally breaking me off. I had to go sit down on a a fallen log for a few minutes after losing that one. The action continued right up until about an hour before complete darkness when, just as you would expect the imagoes to start gathering over the riffles in preparation for a fall, the river just shut down completely. Strange but how much can you really bellyache about it after the kind of day we had so far.

Hole in the Wall

Hard to tell from this image but the pool in front of Mike drops off to around 10-12 feet of depth. Huge wild browns line up along that wall in much the same way that I line up at Clem's Bar-B-Q everytime I'm back in State College, Pa.

Savage River Brook Trout

Yeah, I know. Just what we all need, more blurry, unsharp phish photos. I'm tossing this one up because I get a lot of flack for not posting more wild brook trout shots. So here ya go...

The following two days dawned sunny & cool and the numbers of actively rising fish slacked off a bit to just a sporadic rise here and there. It wasn't nuthin' but a slacker thing because I soon discovered that just prospecting the riffles, runs and fast pocketwater with size #10 March Brown parachutes and comparaduns would yield surprising results under bright bluebird skies. This would turn out to be the best 2 days of solid March Brown fishing that I can recall in 30+ years of angling with the long rod. The browns that came to those March Brown flies out numbered the brookies by 3 to 1 on Saturday but on Sunday those numbers seem to flip flop with some nice sized brookies showing the browns a thing or two about what the term "free rising" means.

Savage River Outfitters Fly Shop

Mike Evans, the owner/operator of SRO, is the consummate host and runs a first class operation here on the banks of the Savage River. Mike was smart enough to escape from the Beltway B-Crat Rat Race a few years ago when he purchased three streamside cottages from some elderly widows then refurbished and remodeled them into tasteful, well appointed fisherman's lodgings with a fully stocked fly shop right on the premisis. Mike's shop also services the North Branch of the Potomac River which lies just a few miles down the road.

It's not all pocketwater on the Savage River. There are some very fine pools, both abbreviated and larger ones, with the depth & cover to provide exquisite dry fly opportunities in classic flatwater fashion. Now when I think of Maryland I think of names like the Grumpy Old Bastard Pool, Ph.D Pool, 7X Pool and Hole in the Wall Pool and the beautiful wild trout that inhabit them. They all strike a familiar and resounding chord with me now.

Kicking back on the rear deck of the Rainbow Cottage before the evening rise. The river runs so close to the cottage that on warm nights when the windows are open you drift off to sleep with the white noise of the river's pocketwater lulling you into a sound slumber. Yes, the Savage River has been veddy, veddy good to me.

Parting Shot: On our last day Mike & Glen had signed up for a float trip on the North Branch of the Potomac below Randolf Jennings Lake/Dam. Looks like it was just gonna be them, their guide (2nd from right) and 2 other dudes in that tiny precarious rafty thingy. Unfortunately, Mike & Glen forgot to bring their fly rods & other gear along with them and had to watch longingly from shore while the other dudes shoved off on their float. Next time guys, toss those rods in the car the night before.

Where Am I?

"Here's yer sign!"

Bonus points will be awarded if one can accurately guess the date the bridge was completed...