As promised, I can update the group on how things were at Coburn this weekend. On Friday, I drove in from New Jersey, where I had a business meeting, stopping at Fishing Creek near Lamar. My Dad and I fished there for a couple of hours. Water was low and clear with surprisingly little bug activity. I managed only one brown on a beadhead pheasant tail. We got driven off the stream at 6:30 by a thundershower. We drove back to Coburn with the intention to drop off my gear and get some dinner, but by the time we got to Penns the skies had cleared, so we fished near the junction of Elk and Penns from about 7:30pm until dark. Penns and Elk were low but very fishable. I ended up landing 5 or 6 fish up to about 14 inches on tan caddis, sulphur duns, and right at dark a coffin fly (aka shad fly, aka green drake spinner). The coffin flies came down in what I'd call a "moderate blizzard." Not the heaviest I have seen but they were definitely "on". Crawling all over you, etc. Sulphur duns and clouds of sulphur spinners too. And a few march brown spinners.
Saturday, we didn't get to the stream until around noon. There were thunderstorms in the area, but they mostly seemed to miss Penns. Got a couple of good fish on tan caddis, and lost one of about 16. I had a frustrating evening. I deliberately chose a deeper hole to stake out to await the drakes. Very little happened during the evening, and I ended up landing only one fish of about a foot long, plus one rock bass (!) Around 9pm, even though the drakes were hitting the water pretty heavily, little was happening so I left the water. I got back to the car and waited a good half hour to 45 minutes for my dad. Since he's over 70 now, I never ever beat him back to the car at the end of the night, so at this point I knew I'd made a big mistake. He took 4 very good fish on coffin flies in the last 20 minutes or so, as it was nearly too dark to see, with the last one estimated at 20 inches or a little better. The rest of our large group (about 12 of us) split between those who stuck it out fairly late and got into a couple of good fish apiece at the end, or those who left too early like me.
Sunday morning/afternoon fishing was really slow for everybody in our group. It began to rain mid-afternoon and was coming down pretty steady all evening. I ended up getting about a half dozen fish from 8 inches to about 13, with most of them coming on a rusty spinner fished "blind" even though there were few active risers. Activity picked up slightly at dark, and a few drakes fell, but not really good numbers, probably due to the rain, which only let up right around dark. Nobody in our group caught big numbers but we did take a few nice fish including one of 18 inches (on an adams, of all things).
Monday late-morning we hit the stream again and things were generally slow, although a few fish were taken on small beadheads. The rain had clouded Elk, but not Penns, which I found odd. Around lunch time, I moved to a deep run and took 5 good fish, with several running about 14-15 inches, on a large golden stone nymph. I think they may have been taking it for a green drake nymph, as there were drakes hatching steadily in low numbers all day. These fish included two stocked rainbows which had colored up and grown football fat in the creek.
We didn't venture over to Spring as we usually do, which is probably an indication that Penns was fishing pretty well all things considered.
Rudy reported that there was a large male bear in camp both Saturday and Sunday nights, and Saturday it tried very persistently to get into one of the occupied campers despite efforts to scare it off by making noise. He also said there was a sow and cubs around too. Nobody in our group saw any of the bears, despite being up late around the campfire and walking back and forth a lot between cabins and campers in the dark.
That's about it. I hope everyone enjoyed the change of scenery at Pine and that it will work out for me to attend the Jam again next year.
