Pictures at the end.
Like all good stories, this one starts at 4:30 AM on the crapper. The biggest problem with planning a trip more than a month out is working with the weather. I had been watching the rain forecast like a hawk for the last couple of days before our adventure but I had failed to check the wind forecast until the day of... 23mph, with gusts up to 54. Lets go fly fishing!
Picked up my cousin, John, just about 7:30, had a little visit with the family then we headed off to the foot of the mountain. Our first glimpse of the river showed what we had feared, the rain the night before had really clouded up and raised the water to unfishable levels. Between the high water and the copious amounts of shiny and new "NO PARKING", "POSTED", "NO TRESPASSING", and "TOWING ENFORCED" signs, we decided that it would be best to try our luck hiking in from Skyline Drive.
As is my usual MO when driving Skyline, I wasn't paying attention to the mile markers and I drove right by our little parking lot but that gave us a chance to turn around in the lot for Jeremy's Run where an angler was packing up for the morning. He said that the water was fishable for a decent way down but the catching part of the deal wasn't worth the walk for him, a premonition I suppose. Well we turned around and headed back to the little 6-car lot and crossed our fingers that the only other vehicle there was not a fisherman who beat us to the punch.
Waders on, we headed down the mountain in search of fishable waters. The walk down was pleasant and I was glad that we weren't recreational hikers as decent sections of the trail had been turned into feeder creeks. When we finally got to the river crossing where the water looked decent, we decided to head down as far as seemed reasonable to fish. I started off with a "Thin Mint" streamer which is pretty much a Golden Retriever tied in olive and brown. I have never had too much luck fishing streamers in the park but the water was just too high and moving too fast for me to keep track of the dry/dropper that I prefer in these waters.
Fishing was unproductive for the rest of the morning without so much as a missed strike. The aforementioned wind turned out to not be as much of a problem as expected as we were on the east slope of the ridge but the gusts caused us to pause every now and then. A slight sprinkle turned into a significant 20 minute rain shower that had us standing in the flooded trail with our back to the driving wind and rain but once it passed, we caught some fleeting glimpses of sunshine. Just about then the tiny black stoneflies started hatching in good numbers (some dark mayflies too but in much fewer numbers). Just before we broke out the stove for some lunch and tea, John told me that he had connected multiple times with what looked to be a decent brookie who turned out to have quite the appetite.
Lunch was cheese, crackers, pepperoni, almonds, and green tea, everything needed to brighten the spirits after a cold and unproductive morning on the water.
After that pool where John had some interested fish had rested a bit, John went back and hooked up a third time with whatever was lurking in this pool, after getting snagged right in the middle of the pool, he invited me to take a couple of casts. After four or five drifts, I figured the pool had gone quiet when to my surprise, an 8"-9" brookie erupted from the water to engulf my Elk Hair Caddis. I'm not sure, but I think some expletive about blessed excrement was shouted as that was the last thing I expected to see just then. I felt bad about landing the trout that John had found and played cat and mouse with so we settled on "he caught it 3 times, I landed it once".
I let John have free reign over whatever water lay ahead and unfortunately, we were neither able to connect with another trout and at about 5PM we decided to make the long slog back up the mountain to the truck. The whole time, I was just thinking about how much I like fishing up from outside the park and getting to have a leisurely (downhill) stroll after a day of fishing but the thought of an ice cold Yuengling back at the truck kept me marching on.
