Iso's & Olives are still on tap

Fished Coburn Tuesday June 26 and found the North side of the stream below the junction pool to be very dirty, seems as if Donnie Beaver secured a permit to do extensive stream improvement on both Elk and Pine Creeks! I must say the work in progress looks great and will only help to improve the overall trout habitat in that area.
  Iso's and Olives were emerging and the trout were eating Iso nymphs, nothing large but very nice brown's. This area seems to have trout that as I said before fight very hard and will not give up and come to the net. Not sure about a large olive spinner fall at night due to the strong wind that was blowing all day long. Air temp was 73 and the water was still in the low 60's not bad for the end of June. The cold nights really help to keep the water cool and the lush stream side vegetation helps. I have been at it again with my planting of yellow water Iris, I'll keep it up as long as there are some mud banks to plant in.
  Now will the perfect opportunity to get your small pack of Terrestrials out and have a great day pounding the shore and shallow riffles with a size 10 or 12 black beetle!

Olives still going on strong

Fished at Johnson's Sunday night, the olives (Drunella lata) are still going strong maybe not as heavy but there non the less. Air temp at 71 and water temp at 62.1, I think that the heavy winds and low humidity a good heavy spinner fall might be pushed to today. I have looked at all the other web sites and they are telling everyone that the olives are size 14, bull crap! Drunella spinners are a solid 16 (you could use a 18 long shank hook and be fine but if you fish a 14 your out of the ball park. I sampled 10 spinners and compared them to my pattern and they are an exact length match for a Tiemco 101 #16, so much for the experts. We had to fish just below the riffles (not a good area to fish these guys because of their wing beating habit) but the old Johnson's cabin had a ton of kids swimming and enjoying the water. Spotted one wonderful very large brown on the far side and did get him to take but I had too much line out and was not in control of it. I gave the spot to Tom B. and he had a go at him also- no hookup. At about 8:30 we saw a lot of light cahill's emerging but did not stay to see if the trout fed on them. They are not called ginger quills!
  Yes there are stoneflies,caddis,craneflies and Iso's but not enough to get them going on any of them, read the other web site very carefully, just because they tell you they are there does not mean the fish are on them. Almost beetle time, if the raspberries are ripe it's beetle and ant ti

Bad Choice

Penns on Sunday 6/10/2012 looked to be fine for Drunella spinners but when I got to Doc's the gate was locked and I was just to lazy to walk down the road, a very dumb decision! Decided to fish behind AFWREO, water was at 600+ cfs and temp was 66, not bad but a very poor spinner area. The amount of very large stoneflies and fish flies that were crashing into the surface made me want to have a #6 dark stone fly to cast at the rising fish. A good spinner fall but just not the best area to target larger fish in the tail out, chubs and smallmouths every where to be seen. A few nice trout but just not the same as Doc's or Coburn, will have to remember that for future use. Saw a ton of Iso's still coming off along with the PE Duns, all the browns that I took came on the PE Dun emerger.
  Should have taken a nymph rod and used a commercial rig to clean the riffles out!

What to do now?

Tie flies that's what to do. You know that you need Iso. nymphs, emergers and spinners, Drunella spinners, ants and large black beetles- so get to it. I've been tying some new expermintal scud patterns for the Winter months along with some Iso. emergers for use when the water does go down. This week it will be White Deer or any other mountain stream, for me it will be some of the smaller limestones in the State College area not big fish just really nice conditions and it you tone down your rod selection to a 2 wt. the smaller guys give you a great fight.  Had to break down and not use the Sharkskin lines for a time, they just overload the rod if you use the same weight line the rod is rated for, they are one strong line size overweight. I do not like to mismatch lines and rods- going back to SA Mastery Trout lines and know how they work with the rods that I have.
  I'll report on the small streams but will not name them. Yes Jim Penns has larger fish but how much time do you really have on it with our 2 year weather pattern of rain?