Beweav
Active member
Thanks to the recommendations from an earlier post, my friends and I took a trip to Penns to explore what it has to offer. We hit the water around 8am and fished till dark. It rained the entire time, and the temps were low enough to make for fingers struggle to tie knots. We went into it knowing the weather was going to be rough so we made the most of it. We had a fantastic time. Penns really lived up to the hype. The area is beautiful. The stream was incredible. We caught the biggest trout of our short careers and ate some delicious steaks. We really couldn't ask for much more.
We had limited success in the morning, maybe two small browns, a bunch of tiny fallfish, and I caught some type of sucker with bumps on his nose and a rosy colored belly. I wish I would have taken a picture of it so I could identify it. My first brown was caught on a small winged Adams wet fly which was a first for me. I fish wet flies quite a bit yesterday and really enjoyed the aggressive takes.
We got cold and it started to rain a little heavier around 11am so we stopped to drink some hot coffee and decided to go make a fire and cook some lunch. We cooked some jalapeño poppers wrapped in bacon in a cast iron skillet over the fire along with potato. When they were ready we threw some Delmonicos on the fire and feasted.
After getting full of food and warmed up, we headed back out for the afternoon. Most of our fish were caught between 2 and 6pm. I caught a couple in the 7 to 13in range and was loving it.
Than I was almost surprised out of my waders. I was fishing a tiny black wooly bugger through really a nice deep whole against a bank. I was basically dead drifting it except I was fishing across multiple currents so it was dragging and swinging a little. I was watching the tip of my fly line, waiting for a hit, when I saw a giant orange belly roll on right around the area I thought my fly was. I set the hook and felt like a hooked into a log. I saw and felt the size of him and almost ruined my waders. I yelled to my buddy to bring a net and watched as they stumbled toward me through the treacherous Penns terrain. I could hardly move him but he didn't run downstream thankfully. We got him to the net and you can see the exhilaration on my face! I know this may be normal for some of you but this is the fish of a lifetime for me. I was pumped.
I got two more 14" plus browns, both really pretty. One of them wacked my bugger so hard he hit and jumped out of the water before I even set the hook.
Around this time my friend broke his fly rod and he decided to spin fish the rest of the day. He is a bass guy anyway so he was pretty happy about it. He proceeds to land three fantastic big browns one on a rooster tail and then after breaking that off on a snag, I gave him a heavy, bright yellow streamer, which he caught the next two on.
I finished up the day with a little action on a tiny white dry fly. So by the end of the day. I caught fish on a wet fly, nymphs, steamers and dry flies. All in all we came off the water with a pile of memories and with our fill of beautiful fish. We will definitely be back! A special thanks to @discomidge for all the help he offered to get us ready for the day.
We had limited success in the morning, maybe two small browns, a bunch of tiny fallfish, and I caught some type of sucker with bumps on his nose and a rosy colored belly. I wish I would have taken a picture of it so I could identify it. My first brown was caught on a small winged Adams wet fly which was a first for me. I fish wet flies quite a bit yesterday and really enjoyed the aggressive takes.
We got cold and it started to rain a little heavier around 11am so we stopped to drink some hot coffee and decided to go make a fire and cook some lunch. We cooked some jalapeño poppers wrapped in bacon in a cast iron skillet over the fire along with potato. When they were ready we threw some Delmonicos on the fire and feasted.
After getting full of food and warmed up, we headed back out for the afternoon. Most of our fish were caught between 2 and 6pm. I caught a couple in the 7 to 13in range and was loving it.
Than I was almost surprised out of my waders. I was fishing a tiny black wooly bugger through really a nice deep whole against a bank. I was basically dead drifting it except I was fishing across multiple currents so it was dragging and swinging a little. I was watching the tip of my fly line, waiting for a hit, when I saw a giant orange belly roll on right around the area I thought my fly was. I set the hook and felt like a hooked into a log. I saw and felt the size of him and almost ruined my waders. I yelled to my buddy to bring a net and watched as they stumbled toward me through the treacherous Penns terrain. I could hardly move him but he didn't run downstream thankfully. We got him to the net and you can see the exhilaration on my face! I know this may be normal for some of you but this is the fish of a lifetime for me. I was pumped.
I got two more 14" plus browns, both really pretty. One of them wacked my bugger so hard he hit and jumped out of the water before I even set the hook.
Around this time my friend broke his fly rod and he decided to spin fish the rest of the day. He is a bass guy anyway so he was pretty happy about it. He proceeds to land three fantastic big browns one on a rooster tail and then after breaking that off on a snag, I gave him a heavy, bright yellow streamer, which he caught the next two on.
I finished up the day with a little action on a tiny white dry fly. So by the end of the day. I caught fish on a wet fly, nymphs, steamers and dry flies. All in all we came off the water with a pile of memories and with our fill of beautiful fish. We will definitely be back! A special thanks to @discomidge for all the help he offered to get us ready for the day.
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