Lil Sandy, Venango County, 5/1/2011

[Sylvaneous]

The water was up as it has been, but totally fishable with only a slight green tinge. Some grannoms were seen but hardly any hatching. I fished a pupa pattern with NO hits. Out of frustration, I tied on a TroutHammer streamer in dark brown. Wow, did things change unexpectedly. I had a lot of missed strikes but I hooked up w/about 4-5 and had a HUGE gator-headed monster (I can only assume it came upstream from the river some time) swim over and chomp it on the drop only to flare his gills for me to miss the hookset. Not any streamer worked. I changed over to my usual go-to, a conehead white marabou muddler and got nothing. As soon as I tied the trout hammer back on, I got back into fish. Given the conditions, it was really surprising to see so many of them so hot for the streamer. Good streamer fishing is such a hoot!
Syl

 

[flythrower]

Sounds like a good time, it's always fun when fish hit streamers aggressively like that. We have a camp on the Allegheny up that way, we'll most likely hit that stream next time we're there. I keep hearing how nice it is.

I assume by "gator headed monster" you mean a musky? How big was it? My brother and I love to fish for muskies on the river but I don't want them up there eating wild browns! HAHA

Thanks for the report.

 

[PennKev]

Good to hear. That's one of my favorites and I fish it often. I've caught many nice fish on streamers there too!

Kev