I made it up to Tioga/Potter Counties for a long weekend this past week. I was up there with my wife’s family (father/mother in law, brother/sister in law, and our baby nephew) and we rented a cabin right on Pine Creek, between Gaines and Ansonia. This wasn’t necessarily a fishing trip, but you can bet I was planning on making sure I got out some. Weather was great all weekend, warm days into the upper 70’s and nights cool enough to make the campfire feel pretty darn good. We managed to get out on three different streams and got into our fair share of fish. Flows were good and water temps were 55-56 on the smaller two streams and 60 on Pine. I haven’t done a good trip breakdown with pictures in a while, so here’s a write-up of our adventures.

I fish with my father in law fairly often…he’s a spin guy and was throwing Joe’s Flies spinners on an UL rod. My brother in law doesn’t fish much, but his choice was to either come with us when we were fishing or hang out with the girls and the baby. He was fishing small Panther Martins and I was hopeful we’d get him into some fish. Friday afternoon after getting everything unpacked and making a beer/grocery run we hit a small Brookie stream. We all got into some fish, with my father in law once again pulling a beautifully colored 8” Brookie out of a nice pool. This one was a classic olive backed Brookie with an orange belly and brilliant orange/red fins. He’s become very adept on our Brookie outings at catching what appears to be the nicest fish in the stream...this is in part to me letting him target the nice deeper pools with his spinner first, while I work the shallower runs and pocket water with a dry fly…but still, he’s caught some really nice Brookies our last few times out.

After a nice hike from the top of the Grand Canyon to the bottom and back along Little Four Mile Run on Saturday with my wife I didn’t have time to drive and hike to another small stream, so I just walked down to Pine from the cabin to see if I could catch an evening hatch of some sort. I found a nice, deep run with some large submerged boulders and set up to just watch for a while. Sure enough there were a decent amount of size 12 or so brown/gray mayflies coming off that the fish (and birds) were keying on…pretty sure they were Slate Drakes. I didn’t have any quill bodied files with me that large so I tried fishing an Adams, size 12. Got a couple rises and refusals on the 12, so I switched to a 14 and that was the trick…the bugs definitely seemed closer to a 12, but the fish wanted the 14. Ended up catching a few standard 10-12 inch stocker Browns and Bows.

On Sunday we got out pretty early to another smallish freestoner, although slightly bigger and with less gradient than the one from Friday. I was trying to find a slightly bigger stream this time to give my father/brother in law a little more water to work their spinners in. I really didn’t know what to expect from this one, but it’s not far from my Dad’s hunting camp and he said it was worth a look. Turned out to be a really nice mix of small, open meadows and forested canopy sections…another cool surprise, it turned out to be about a 50/50 mix of Brookies and Browns. I really like those kind of streams…I guess I just enjoy the surprise of not knowing what it is at the end of the line. We fished a solid mile plus of the stream until it started to get pretty hot in the open meadow sections and we called it quits so my brother in law could get back to camp to take the kayaks out with his wife. Once more my father in law caught a first cast of the day, 8” Brookie from underneath an undercut tree…didn’t get a picture of that one but it was another really nice Brookie. We all hooked into decent numbers of fish…I had one Brown leap out of the water at my fly on one of my false casts in a tight spot…caught him on the next cast.

All in all a great weekend with family and fishing…and of course just driving around up there I now have a laundry list of new streams I want to try.

Pics:
07 - Small Stream 1
04 - Father in Law's Brookie from Small Stream 1
32 - Pine from the top of the Canyon
36 - Pine between Gaines and Ansonia
34 - Stocker Brown from Pine
38 - Small Stream 2 - Father in Law's first cast of the day Brookie came from under that tree
43 - Small Stream 2 - forested section
45 - Small Stream 2 - meadow section
46 - Brown from Small Stream 2 - this is the leaper
47 - Small Stream 2 Brookie - last cast of the trip

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Wow, gorgeous water and that first brookie has awesome colors! Joe's Flies are by far my favorite spinners to use for brookies. I haven't used them in a while, but now I want do that more often.

Matt - Very cool write-up and pictures. Looks like a great trip all around.

Those meadow sections of mountain freestoners are often the sections where I've observed the highest concentrations of fish. Perhaps its the hoppers, or other bugs living on the grasses, or perhaps it because they are simply shallower sections of streams where you can more readily see the fish. Lord willing, I'll be on a Potter County stream section next weekend (finally!!!). After reading through some of the Logging Era of Pennsylvania books, I've come to discover that the meadow on one stream that I fish up there was actually a logging town awhile back. And another section of another stream (not so meadowish), which was strewn with logging artifacts that someone had dug up, was another logging town.

Swattie, great pics and story. I was up recently but it rained very hard on Friday evening and we spent the rest of the trip fishing small mountain streams. We camped off of Tiadaghton rd. We did pretty good Friday until the rain came in earnest. But Saturday was awesome on the small mountain streams.