River conditions

[Brains]

Live 2 hrs away and plan to get my son into fly fishing. We were planning to fish little sandy and/or oil creek before t with recent rains thinking it may not be in the cards.
What flow rate is max for oil creek and does little sandy clear up quickly.
Been about ten years for me getting out and fishing PA.
Thanks for any help you can offer
Ed

 

[PAFLYBOY]

Looking at my notes from the past several years I'd say that I would fish it up to about 5-600cfs max. I would think 2-400cfs would be ideal depending on how you like to fish. I'm not sure how old your son is but, obviously, you may not want him trying to wade at the higher end of those flows. I don't have much experience with Little Sandy so I can't offer any advice on that creek...

 

[Brains]

Thanks for the info. I want my son to have a good experience so he continues to fish with me
Appreciate it

 

[PennKev]

Live 2 hrs away and plan to get my son into fly fishing. We were planning to fish little sandy and/or oil creek before t with recent rains thinking it may not be in the cards.

Where are you located? If you are driving 2 hours to fish Oil Creek, you may be better off driving 2 hours in a different direction. I live in New Castle, and I can get to Spring or LJR in under 3 hours, for example.

 

[Brains]

I live in cleveland.

 

[PennKev]

I live in cleveland.

Yeah, your best options in reasonable driving distance are all in the Oil Creek vicinity. However, that region has many worthwhile streams of every size. If you are really concerned about catching fish, Sugar Creek comes down and clears faster than Oil and fishes well, has some nice hatches, etc. but is bigger water than Little Sandy, however there are no special regs on Sugar.

Little Sandy is usually good after a days wait. The truth be told, streams of this size often fish best the next day even if the water is still off colored.

In regard to flows on Oil, you should expect flows between 300 and 600 cfs in the spring and often on the higher end of that. If you wait for lower flows you might not get much fishing in, particularly this early in the season. Neshannock or other special regs streams in the general area will provide more opportunities if you need less challenging flows.

 

[tomgamber]

2 hours will also get you to many fo the areas around Clarion. Much enjoyed and learned how to flyfish on those streams when I was in college.

 

[PAFLYBOY]

PennKev made some good suggestions. Sugar Creek is a nice stream that does seem to drop fairly quickly. I live somewhat near Neshannock Creek and can tell you that it has a ton of trout in it(at least in the delayed harvest stretch) and is getting stocked again later this week. If I wanted a good chance to get a kid on some nice sized trout this would be near the top of my list. Much like Oil Creek, you can expect it to be a bit crowded but, I haven't found that to be too much of a problem. There is a very nice fly shop on the banks of the creek in the town of Volant, PA that could help you with any information that you need...

 

[hooker-of-men]

If I had to drive 2 hours to fly fish for trout, I mostly wouldn't target trout with my fly rod... Just saying.

 

[CRB]

Steelhead streams in Ohio are on fire! They will be excellent till the end of the month. May save you a 4 hour round trip, with four more hours on the stream.