Hatches

Tuz

Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2019
Messages
39
Well folks, what did you think of hatches this year. Personally, I thought I noticed a big decline and not only hatches but insect life in general. I fished all across Pennsylvania. Chased Green Drakes at Pens. White flies on the Susquehanna. Sulphurs on central PA streams. And I’m not just talking about hatches. In general I mean even my daily western PA fishing trips I just felt like I didn’t see the bugs like I used to. What do you guys think?
 
Just washed/waxed my truck this weekend before the road salt starts. First full hand wash since April. I hand wash twice a year (Spring and Fall) and usually wax it since I put the time in to wash it. In between I just power-wash it to get the mud/dust/dirt/salt off as needed.

Anyway, the front end and the amount of elbow grease I had to put in to get it clean suggests there were plenty of bugs this year, somewhere, at some point.

That said, anecdotally, I didn’t do much hatch chasing this year, but I’ll agree I mainly struck out too. Had one decent night on The Pine, Sulphurs and Slate Drakes. Not great by any stretch, but everybody in our group caught fish that night, on top. Had one skunking each with no appreciable bugs (I didn’t feel like nymphing, and just relaxed on the bank mostly) on Kettle, First Fork, and Penns. Others who were nymphing around me those evenings were catching the occasional fish, but it was slow all around. All late May/early June timeframe. Too small and varied locations of a sample size to make any determinations off of, but FWIW.
 
I was satisfied. I waited for a few spinner falls that never happened but the hatches were good to me.
 
The hatches I ran into this year were pretty typical/normal, but I thought the grannom hatch here in NWPA this year was actually very good.
 
I tend to agree with Tuz. The hatch of all the different insects seemed way off to me. Fished the Breeches mostly and top water fishing was pretty miserable.
 
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