Shenango River, Mercer County, 5/11 and 5/12/13

streamerguy

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Fished the Shenango River yesterday morning from around 7ish to noon and then again today from I want to say around 10:30 to 2. Great fishing both days.

Yesterday started off abnormal. I arrived at the river to see a pretty good caddis hatch(nothing out of the ordinary) but the fish were rising everywhere! For some reason the fish on the Shenango don't really take advantage of the hatches there but yesterday they did. Lost track of how many trout I caught I dries, I think around 10. Tan caddis sz 16-14ish. I left my main dry fly box at home so I didn't have a good selection, and I eventually lost both of my flies(one to a fish, one to a tree) that I was having action on. The next fly I tried the color and size was off a little and I barely got any to rise. Frustrating. I then tied on a dropper with a sz 16 cased caddis larvae and picked up a few more. Also stopped by Cool Spring Creek for a half an hour(didn't have much time) and picked up one bow on a streamer. Also ran into fishingnoob there which was nice.

Today the caddis were still hatching but I saw very few rises, although there were a few. Nothing on dries, but got a few more trout on streamers.

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Oh and I caught a LOT of natives both days. They attacked streamers aggressively, but I even got one on a dry and one on a nymph! Trout were a nice by-catch though ;-)

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Water conditions were good both days(as always there usually) and a good amount of other people but not a whole lot of catching by others. Great two days on the water!
 
nice Nick. I'm still anticipating my first trout catch on a dry. Haven't had any luck yet. Maybe I'll have some luck this weekend at the jam
 
Looks like you guys had nice outings.

Fishingnoob, a few words of advice. There is no substitute for time on the water practicing on fishing dries, this advice works for any new method of fishing. A good way to do this is by leaving the nymphs and streamers at home so you focus on getting better fishing dries (bring a few small nymphs for dry/dropper rig but don't fish them anyother way). One thing I did to get better at dry fly fishing was to fish for blue gills with a dry fly. Blue gills will rise to a dry fly and can be very discriminating at times.
 
oh, I think if your coming to the jam this weekend you'll get your chance to catch fish on dries, this time of year on those creeks, it's the only way lots of us fish, nymphs are for winter!!! ;-)
 
Funny you mention that bikerfish cause I DID!!! Nailed a nice 13 inch brook trout with a march brown on fishing creek...absolutely incredible and totally thrilling...it was the highlight of my time at the jam
 
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