French Ck, Chester Co., 4/23/2010

[skiltonian]

Decided to hit French today and glad I did. Fished above the FFO section to about half way into it. Wound up with 22 fish consisting of bows, browns and a brook (also got suckers, panfish and a sm bass but didn't count those) with biggest being a 20" rainbow. Pretty fun on my 1 wt SPL. Few were caught with black caddis parachute emerger and the rest on varies nymphs. Very random fish rises and the ones that did got caught. Fished acted like they weren't too pressured. The big one I spotted and decided to cable up to 5x with a sz 12 stone. On the first cast, she moved about half a foot towards the fly and slammed it with a beautiful flash of silver.

 

[mute]

Awesome!

 

[mystillwater]

I was on French in the same section yesterday afternoon... didn't do quite as well as Skiltonian but had a good day. I caught 6 on nymphs. All but one of them on a size 14 Pheasant Tail. The other was on a a BH Hares Ear. Mostly in the deeper, faster runs. The more weight the better. Seemed like the first cast after adding more weight would result in a fish. Biggest fish was a 12" bow.

It was my first time in that section so i'm not sure how the flows were compared to normal but the water must have been a little cool because the fish didn't seem to be overly active. i did seem some risers sporadically but didn't try em with drys.

Nice stretch of water. Would love to try it again with a 3wt and some drys.

bummer of the day was the spin fisherman on the FFO side of the bridge with a stringer full of nice fish.