Slippery Rock Creek, Lawrence County, 08/03/2010

[albatross]

David, Bruno and I had a ball with the smallmouths on SRC tonight. The water was slightly high and slightly discolored -- perfect conditions. A freakin ton of whiteflies came off starting at around 8:15 with a few hexegenia mixed in. The pictures tell the story.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Thats pretty cool!
Thanks for sharing!

Those smallies taken the white flies?

 

[Squaretail]

That IS cool Greg. Thanks.

 

[bikerfish]

that's what it's all about!!! what section af the stream did ya fish?
it's good to see the hatch lasting more than a week so far, last year kinda sucked, at least on the stretch where I live.

 

[albatross]

The smallies were up sipping white flies. We had luck with any large white colored fly, even a popper. A fly significantly larger than the naturals seemed to work best.

Biker,

We were a couple miles north of 422.

 

[Bruno]

Greg / David

Thanks for the company last night – I had a great time. It is just plain fun. I agree with biker that last year was not so good. I may head up again tonight.

 

[greenghost]

Cool Gregg. I was planning to head up there after work yesterday too. But a last minute work crisis killed my plans. I'm on my way to Ocean City tomorrow, so I'll have to wait another year for the white flies.

I was able to hit the hatch Saturday night and had fun. Not an awful lot of fish and they were smaller than in years past, but the hatch, as always, is a must-see event.

 

[David]

GG,
While we didn't land any monsters, most of the fish caught had some shoulders. Bruno had one big guy break him off and my best was getting close to 15". The majority seemed to be in the 10-13 inch range, leaning towards the high end. And all with lot's of spunk.

The hatch has been going on for at least a couple days because their bellies were BIG. I think alby even had one puke on him (binge and purge!) The hatch was heavy enough that even after dark the horizon had a glow. When it shut down, it shut down quickly!
There was also a hex spinner fall that never materialized. There was a cloud of them forming above me until a slight drizzle fell for no more than a minute...spinners were gone!!!

Alby,
Thanks again for the reel (I left my reel bag at home and was up there an hour and a half earlier than bruno and alby...talk about torture!!!!)

Bruno,
Thanks for the beer...good stuff!!!

 

[JackM]

If there's any chance the hatch would still be on Monday next, I can go after work. Otherwise, I missed it as well this year. But, I caught the GDs at the Jam, so....

 

[albatross]

Maybe I shouldn't mention this on the internet, but my super-special glow in the dark popper was just slaying these fish... You can see it in the first two pics.

Matt and Bruno, thanks for a great time and thanks for the beers. I've been comming to Slippery Rock for 3 years now trying to hit the white flies and this time I really got to experience the full-blown hatch. What a spectacle!

 

[Bruno]

I forgot to mention the carp - they coming right up outta the water. Sounded like someone throwing rocks at us in the dark.

 

[Acristickid]

Neato.

 

[greenghost]

FYI --The hatch has been going on strong for about 7-10 days now. I suspect it will be tapering off in the next few days.

Jack,
Chances are you will still see flies Monday, and who knows, with a little luck it may still be fairly heavy. But given its intensity over the past week it seems unlikely.

One thing for sure, the fish are keyed and probably will continue to be for a while.

 

[snookpirate]

Nice report! Thanks for sharing

 

[bikerfish]

I headed out tonite for a bit, here's some pics

 

[PennKev]

Good show biker!

That big guy is probably 14-15" easy!

Wonder if today's the rain will mess things up...

 

[bikerfish]

thanks Kev, they were really "on" last night. the hatch was the heaviest I've seen, had flies all the way up to my house, which is probably 3/4 of a mile away at least. didn't see any carp jumping out of the water though! at first I though the big guy was a carp, he was heavy! glad I had 3x tippet, didn't want to lose any like last time!

 

[albatross]

Nice pics biker. Thanks for sharing. Your report gave me flashbacks to my Tuesday outing...

 

[jaybo41]

Fished upstream from the FFO area on Saturday evening-8/7/10 with Ernieball and had a blast for a couple of hours. The hatch was still on, although not quite as much of a blizzard as some of the photos I've seen. Maybe we should have gone further upstream for a thicker hatch? Picked all of mine up on a White Wulff #12, no need to change from that pattern.

We saw a decent number of Hex's coming off too, probably in the 6-8 hook size? Birds were digging the bug activity, they swooped across the stream from the treeline and picked off the bugs hatching. No doubt they went to bed with full bellies!

Good stuff man, this was my first attempt to hit the White Fly hatch. I will be back at it next year!

 

[PennKev]

I fished further up on Sun. evening. Not much going on. Still a fair number of whiteflies but the fish weren't into them where I was at. The hatch woud be good if it were any other bug on any other creek, but as far as SRC whitelfies go, it was a light hatch.

There were a good number of hexes around though. Again, the fish didn't want those either but I did get a dink and a couple of light hits swinging a hex style nymph.

Kev