Early Stones - It's Game on.

It's good to see the stones as a sign that Spring is on its way, but I agree, the fish usually don't seem very intersted in the early Little Black Stones. I hit a good hatch of them last February on a little SE PA class A freestoner...fished LBS dries and nymphs but the only thing that produced fish was my usual Winter technique of drifting or slowly jigging weighted Buggers on the bottom.
 
Where I fish the LBS crawl up the banks and into the creekside bushes. LBS nymphs fished in the shallows at tails of pools (or near the bushes with the LBS) works well. The dry fly fishing isn't from hatching bugs really, but from when a gust of wind blows the adults back in the water and they motor across the surface to get back. Usually it's only the smaller fish that pick them off, but it does allow for for some early dry fly action. At least that's what I usually see.

The large stonefly adults don't cause much action out east, but stonefy nymphs of all sizes are a consistent producer all year long since most large stoneflies have a two year cycle. Tan "softshell" stonefly nymphs are often worth a try when it gets a little warmer.
 
I'd like to see some pictures of the LBS nymphs top and bottom.
 
Fishidiot wrote:
The little early stones were all over the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg today - both the little blacks and the larger browns. The browns were pretty big (roughly #16) and very active on the surface, esp the bank side eddies.
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SWEET!!! :-D
 
Year in-year out: Little Black Stone= Key steelhead nymph this time of year.
 
blue sky outfitters report on their FB page that he saw LBS and olives on Sunday afternoon, but no hatch or rises.
 
JackM wrote:
I won't say one or two weren't seen, but there is no way, no way that any hatch has started. We get this kind of thing all the time and it never pans out. Hatches will get under way within two weeks of either side of when they would be expected. Trust me.
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jackm,

i guess slate run needs to get people up there to sell more gear, what better way than to get us excited that a hatch is starting. to their defense they only said quill gordon's spotted.

i did see a flock of robins in reading on monday + phil did not see his shadow = spring is near?
 
Calm down Andy,
There is always a small sz. 16 quill gordon that hatches on warmer days in late winter early spring. It is not the big one..b.w.o.'s were showing as well. i will start reporting on my site whats going on up here beginning of march...
 
Dam Jack, I figured if nothing else you'd be able to take me at my word, but rest assured, when I say crawling all over the rocks I meant thousands, not one or two. If there had been one or two I might have been more inclined to say "one or two", unless you were trying to "bust my stones". In the latter case please disregard previous commentary.

Boyer

Edit: Haha, just reread. Thinking you might have meant Gordon's. Not gonna Pete the post because it's not often I get to make a cheesy stone fly pun. :)
 
MattBoyer wrote:
Dam Jack, ....
Edit: Haha, just reread. Thinking you might have meant Gordon's. Not gonna Pete the post because it's not often I get to make a cheesy stone fly pun. :)
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I was talking about QGs. Stoneflies can appear anytime it gets a bit warm now. And since there is so many, there is so much diversity, that you may get a short-lived prolific hatch at this time of year with BSFs.


PS, I purposely used abbreviations. Not to save typing, obviously, but to try to appear more knowledgable than I am.
 
drakes on penns!!!LOL!!!
 

.
sandfly wrote:
Calm down Andy,
There is always a small sz. 16 quill gordon that hatches on warmer days in late winter early spring. It is not the big one..b.w.o.'s were showing as well. i will start reporting on my site whats going on up here beginning of march...
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Bob,

I fished the delayed harvest on the Pine at Slate Run today, and saw 2 mayflies. One was small maybe a size 18 or 20, which I assumed was an olive. The other one I would estimate to be a size 12 or 14, coloration from 10 ft or so away to be a Quill Gordon. Maybe a little smaller, wish I could have caught it to verify.
 
I'm calm, I'm calm! I just find the humor in naming our mini-jam the "Quill Gordon Summit", yet we run the risk of missing the QG yet again! Last year some swore we picked a date that was too early, we ended up being too late. This year, who knows? It's not REALLY about the hatch, of course. I don't think anyone was complaining last year about the QG Summit turning into the March Brown Summit!
 
The_Sasquatch wrote:
I'm calm, I'm calm! I just find the humor in naming our mini-jam the "Quill Gordon Summit", yet we run the risk of missing the QG yet again! Last year some swore we picked a date that was too early, we ended up being too late. This year, who knows? It's not REALLY about the hatch, of course. I don't think anyone was complaining last year about the QG Summit turning into the March Brown Summit!
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Don't worry, there's NO quill gordons hatching yet! The way the extended forecast looks like things should be fine. They are calling for colder then normal temps for the next couple of weeks. So, as long as we don't get some very high temps things should be normal.
 
sandfly wrote:
Calm down Andy,
There is always a small sz. 16 quill gordon that hatches on warmer days in late winter early spring. It is not the big one..b.w.o.'s were showing as well. i will start reporting on my site whats going on up here beginning of march...
Click to expand...

Bob,
I this your way of selling those quill gordons you mistakenly tied on size 16 hooks? :)
 
In the past month I'm still continuing to see a lot of stoneflies. Although I can't say I've paid particularly close attention to this....it does indeed seem to me that they have been heavier and have continued longer this year than I can ever remember. A few nights ago, while bass fishing, I half expected to see caddis but the stones were still coming off and trout were still feeding on 'em. I'm wondering if the cold conditions and stable water levels we've seen this spring may have had something to do with this(?). To be sure, most of them I'm seeing are on warm water creeks and rivers, but they are still on trout streams around here too - and lots of 'em.

What have you been seeing? Does it seem like this has been a very good year for early stoneflies in your neck of the woods?
 
I was at the Susquehanna near Marietta Sunday night and the were coming off heavy. Seemed a little larger than the very early ones. These were 3/4 to an inch long.
 
There were a lot of stoneflies coming off Muddy Creek - York Co. on Sunday afternoon. Occasional rises but nothing consistent.
 
There are still plenty of Stone Flies hatching in SE PA, the first big may flies are just now starting. The time for the QG jam is probably perfect.
 
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