Poconos Fishing Report

With the apocalypse apparently approaching, Mary and I decided to light out to the Poconos to visit the "fam" and get a little time in on the stream.  Spent Friday evening with brother Kelly and his girlfriend Lisa in downtown Stroudsburg, enjoying great food, craft brews, and a flight of tasty Old Fashions at Newberry's Yard of Ale.

Saturday morning we met up with Dad and brother Jeff for the traditional fortifying breakfast at the Mt. Bethel diner.  Then we headed up to practice some "social distancing" on the McMichael, a trout stream which runs through Stroudsburg.  As the stocked streams close in March, a few miles up from town is a delayed harvest section, which permits fishing year round.  As an added bonus, the section is a Keystone Select stream, meaning that the state stocks brood (i.e., really big) trout in addition to the normal sized stockies.

We got on the water a little after 11:30.  Conditions were pretty good for mid-March; partly cloudy skies, temps in the high 40s, water cold (probably in the low 40s), a little low but good flows.  As this is one of the few streams that be fished this time of year, there were quite a few anglers on the water, but the special regs section goes for miles, so there was plenty of open water.

Although there were a lot of bugs in the air, predominantly caddises and little black stoneflies, we saw no fish rising, so we focused on nymphing fish-looking runs.

It was a great few hours of fishing, but not for catching, with one exception.  I was fishing a run and thought I saw a rise about 100 feet downstream.  There was a large boulder along the bank, and what looked like a deep (4-plus feet) run alongside it.  So I meandered down to it.  I had a size 14 Rainbow Warrior that Mary had tied a couple of days earlier.  On the first cast the strike indicator went down and I knew it wasn't the bottom.  What I didn't know until about 5 seconds into the fight was the size of the fish I'd stuck, which was confirmed by the bend the trout put in the 3 weight.  The anxiety of knowing that you have a big fish on a light rod makes time go by pretty slowly, but fortunately the trout was kind of lethargic, and after a few runs I was able to put a 20-plus inch Rainbow (well, three quarters of him anyway) into the net.

The only downer for the day was the creep who walked off with a box of Mary-tied flies that she inadvertently left on a bench by the stream.  Not to sound elitist, but there were some sketchy-looking dudes spin-fishing in the general locale.  When Mary realized that she had left her fly box on the bench, by the time she got there the dudes were gone, and so was her fly box.

A small glitch in an otherwise pretty good weekend. And hopefully a harbinger of a great fishing season.

Tight Lines,
Mikey D Fishing

P.S.  Some photos from a "mental health" trip I made to Belize last month. A bit windy for good fly fishing, but did manage a few, including a couple of Bonefish, on my own.