Just to follow up on all the doom and gloom about the Erie crowds. I did in fact take my 8 year old daughter and 10 year old son to Erie this weekend. We arrived at the Old Rt 20 bridge on Elk Creek (Maurice knows exactly where I'm talking about) at 6:30 Saturday morning. We were the second car there.
As the sun came up, we found ourselves sitting on a hole with about 150 steelhead mostly to ourselves. There were two guys about 30 yards below us, and a few scattered above us. I helped the kids for a while, we caught a few fish, and then they wanted to do it themselves. They didn't land any by themselves, but they did actually fair hook several fish. A couple jumps were near misses with my daughter nearly getting taken down by a feisty male steelhead taking to the air. October steel is much more acrobatic than December steel, and much harder to actually land!
The water was clear, and by about 10 am things had slowed down, so we took a drive to Walnut to show them why we don't fish there. As usual, it was a good example of insanity. We went over to Trout Run to watch the fish coming into the PFBC nursery, and got some nice pics. Ended the day fishing just below Follie's End/ RT 98. There were plenty of fish there, and were reported to have arrived on Wednesday. Hooked a couple without landing any. Not a lot of fisherman here either (maybe 8 cars at the campground).
Woke up Sunday and hit the RT 20 hole again, with similar results to Saturday. Left the water around 10 am and detoured to show the kids Niagra Falls on the way home. I hadn't ever been there either, and we all had a great time. I couldn't have asked for a more successful trip.
Moral of the story? You can't experience a weekend like that without getting out of the house and taking the chance. It was a weekend to remember for all of us, and it wouldn't have happened if I would have heeded the conventional wisdom and stayed home.