Erie Tribs

[Tom Guffain]

Six of us went on our annual Stlhd trip to fish the Erie Tribs of Pennsylvania last week.  Although we did not find to number of stlhd in the creeks that we had in previous years there were enough to make this trip one of the most productive trlips in years.  We started fishing last Monday on 20 Mile Creek.  Although there was plenty of water in the creek the fish were not spread out throughout the river as expected but were in the deeper runs.  All of us hooked fish and I ended the day with 8 hookups but no fish landed. 

It started raining hard Monday night and all the area creeks were unfishable with high muddy water with lots of leaves.  However, by Wednesday 20 Mile Creek had cleared nicely and we found stlhd spread throughout the river.  I had better luck landing fish with 12 hookups and 8 landed.  Everyone else also had a good day hooking and landing stlhd.

On Thursday we fished Elk Creek and fished the water around Folly's Campground.  We found few fish downstream of Folly's but found a good number of fish in the deeper runs upstream especially in all the deeper runs at the base of the cliffs.  We all probably had our best day of hookups and landing fish of this trip here.

Smaller flies, 16-18s, seemed to work better, eg, small single egg patterns, green caddis larvae, small stoneflies, small Pheseant Tails.