Fished on Sunday at the Little Lehigh, and got my butt kicked. I tried #20 black zebra midges, same size pheasant tail nymph, hare's ear nymph, and #18 Copper John - all with bead heads...nothing. So I was using a little strike indicator, and tried to vary the depth. Maybe I never went deep enough?

After trying a few pools, a few trout gave me another lesson in humility. I was wading and not 12 - 15 feet away from me, trout started rising at 3:00 pm, and they were taking bugs from the surface. Despite the chilly temps, I saw a few bugs on the surface. My thought was it was some type of trico? They were.really small.

I had #20 Al's Trico and tied one on. A whole bunch of casts later still no fish. A couple of times, trout rose and took something from the surface within feet of my fly drifting by. I seriously couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.

Any advice guys? I want to go back and I redeem myself soon.

Despite my poor performance, I still felt lucky for two reasons. One, I got to see and fish the LL. It's really beautiful there. Secondly, my wife was hoping I'd finish painting an upstairs bedroom on Sunday. Given the choice between having a paintbrush or a fly rod in my hand...well, even a bad day on the LL beat the heck of of painting.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hear, hear! Painting is one of the few things I'll pay someone else to do. Don't know much about the LL but there was a nice hatch of midges on the Donegal Sunday afternoon. No risers though that I saw.

I finally got out to fish for trouts for first time since october and decided to fish the little lehigh on tuesday because I was working in that area and always want to fish this stream and it was nice out and the trouts were rising a lot so i saw what you saw. I tried lots of flies before getting luck and then caught lots on a small black beetle and big one was a rainbow near 20in. This place is nice and i will fish it more because there are lots of trouts in it.

Weaves,
Sounds like a day you got "schooled." Still happens to us who've been fishing for years - esp on tough streams like the LL.

My guess would be the bugs you saw were stoneflies. Tricos come off in summertime and midges are very small (although they do come off in winter).

I also was on the Donegal earlier this week and saw quite a few rises in one area. There were definitely midges in the air but there were also BWOs coming off which is fairly common early in the season on limestone creeks especially on an overcast day. I really didn't have much with me to imitate either one. I put on the smallest thing I had, a size 22 bunny trico spinner. I promptly caught a rainbow, which was pretty cool catching one on top in February, and on a trico none the less. After I accomplished that I quickly changed to a size 8 weighted olive wooly bugger and caught quite a few bouncing the bugger on the bottom. It was great to spend a few hours on the stream.

It was midges Sunday on the LL sz 24-26 they ate them readily on top as well as nymphed down below

No tricos in the winter. But there are certainly small black midges in winter at the LL. lus it has a good hatch of Early Black Stone Flies #18. Usually a twitch of the fly will attract trout when all else fails. A # 20 Al's Rat would probably catch them drifted subsurface.

I have found that when I am not catching fish it is because my fly is dragging. Try and mend more. Good Luck!!
Sean

Thanks Sean...I'll give that a try.
Weaves

I never feel bad when I get my Butt kicked on the LL. The fish there have a P.hD in flies. lol

Definitely Midge hatch. Tiny, 26, 28 sizes. Rat will work well during these hatches. Fish it mid surface.

Weaves, What did the riseform look like? Sounds to me like they were porpoising to midges in the film. A size 20 Griffith's gnat dead drifted IN the film on a 6X point cast 2 feet upstream of the riser would probably work. A decent pair of compact binox will solve the riddle. Almost always, fish arent really taking the bugs you see flying around. Hook your rod under your arm for a few minutes and watch a riser at 7X magnification then prepare to get schooled on what we should be offering the trout. JG

Don't sweat it Weaves- LL is not an easy stream to fish- it gets an extraordinary amount of pressure.

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PJ- do you often use terrestrials this time of year? I never would have thought about trying one, but I can't argue with success!