Oil Creek, Venango County, 5/23/2016

[Sylvaneous]

Clear and flowing 260 cfs. Some fish were rising softly and sporadically when I arrived before 8. Saw a few larger bright yellow Cahills upon arriving, but there was not much hatch activity until after 8:30. The initial rising eased up after i arrived. i think it was due to the presence of Acentrellas or Pseudocleons. I saw some small upright wings, but didn't get a decent look.

Fished a small sulfur snow shoe shuck dun 'compara-dizzle', a sz 16 pupa hook with good success.

Sulfurs made their showing en-mass after 8:45. Then the trout started eating duns. Until then, everything was taken under the film.

I landed 8 or so. All fish were rainbows and fought very well. About half went airborne after being hooked. Very feisty fish indeed.

Along with the sulfurs were some sz. 14 bright yellow Cahills and sz. 14 and 12 Grey Foxes. No spinners seen.

The crabapples are blooming, so along with everything else (had a bald eagle fly down and back up stream over me), it was done with a heavy sweet rose-scented fragrance.

 

[PocketWater]

Sounds like a nice day on the water. I have never fished Oil Creek but have heard good things from multiple people just this year. I'll have to make it up there some time.

Question: How can you tell the difference between a yellow cahill and one of the 3 sulphur varieties?

 

[dryflyguy]

PocketWater wrote:
Sounds like a nice day on the water. I have never fished Oil Creek but have heard good things from multiple people just this year. I'll have to make it up there some time.

Question: How can you tell the difference between a yellow cahill and one of the 3 sulphur varieties?

Cahills have barring in the wings.

I fished oil creek in the park yesterday also. (It was the only stream around that wasn't blown out by the rain over the weekend)
Didn't get there until noon.
There were still enough flies hatching and fish rising to make things interesting.
Sulphers and gray fox trickled off all afternoon, along with some caddis and BWO's.
I caught most of my fish on caddis though.
All rainbows - guess that is all they stocked there this year

 

[PocketWater]

dryflyguy wrote:

PocketWater wrote:
Sounds like a nice day on the water. I have never fished Oil Creek but have heard good things from multiple people just this year. I'll have to make it up there some time.

Question: How can you tell the difference between a yellow cahill and one of the 3 sulphur varieties?

Cahills have barring in the wings.

Thanks for the reply. I googled them and see what you mean.

 

[Sylvaneous]

PocketWater wrote:

Question: How can you tell the difference between a yellow cahill and one of the 3 sulphur varieties?

Bigger and yellower. I can't say what ISN'T the yellow cahill, but I can say what IS. The sulfurs were a lot smaller. They have dun wings, too and the Cahills have wings essentially as bright as their body.


Syl

 

[dryflyguy]

By the way, the deer flies were terrible up there on monday. They bit me - and my wife, who was sitting on a bench along the stream, trying to read a book - up pretty good.
Which was a little funny IMO.
Because about 5pm, a helicopter flew low overhead - and dumped some brown liquid into the stream just above the bridge in petroleum center.
I assume it was juice to kill black flies.
But, apparently, it doesn't work very well against deer flies!

 

[Arrowflinger]

The spraying they do is to make the male flies sterile so they can't fertilize the eggs so it takes a couple cycles of breeding for it to show