Allegheny River bugs

[Sylvaneous]

Floated it on Monday for Smallies. They are almost all done guarding fry, so I figured it might be OK. I wasn't fishing the banks much anyway. ANYHOW...what does that have to do with entimology: Well, I have seen very little bug activy on Oil Creek since it came down from May rains. The Allegheny above Oil City at around 5 PM had many drunella/cornuta olive duns sitting on the surface and a fair amount of Isonychias. My semi-industrial bass river has better hatches than my trout stream. Bummer. If I saw that density of bugs on Oil Creek, I know I could find a few risers.

 

[TheDuke44]

Can't speak much for north of the area, but I stop at Woods & River Coffee in Oil City whenever I'm up there to fish and I'm always surprised at the hatches I've seen come off on the river while either just sipping coffee on the patio or driving over the Petroleum Street bridge.

My most recent trip there in late May wasn't to fish (go figure) and I witnessed probably the biggest Grannom hatch I've ever seen - truly a "blizzard" hatch. Usually end up with sulphurs, BWOs, etc splattered all over my grille after a drive through that area too.

Considering the industry that used to dominate the area not too long ago, it's truly impressive how well the water and bugs have bounced back. One of too few success stories in stream rehabilitation.

 

[RLeep2]

The (Allegheny) river can funny in a weird way. Back 30-plus years ago when I was fishing it a lot, there were huge, blanket-like hatches of some sort of sulfur or another in July and major white fly hatches in August. Yet, in either instance, I saw very few if any fish of any kind actively paying attention and the fish I did see, I suspect were simply sticking their heads out of the water trying to figure out which way it was to Tidioute.

On the other hand, I've had pretty good fishing in the river to low intensity mixed bag hatches of brown drakes, march browns/gray foxes and isonychias. This was over smallmouth and trout as well when it was early enough in the year that the latter were still in the main river.

I always figured it was just one of those things that made you go Hmmm..