Sugar Creek, Venango Co, 05-28-2025

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Butler Co home, Forest Co camp
Time Fished: 425pm - 855pm

Weather Conditions: 55 degrees, overcast and times of light drizzle.

Water Conditions: 54 degrees, running higher than normal, a tinge of green

Insects: March Browns were hatching, so was a small dark mayfly like a paraleoptopheibia, some Caddis around, a few other insects that I didn’t get a good look at.

I tied on 3 wets at the truck and began getting strikes right away. Action was pretty consistent with the deeper pools being more productive. The combination of flies used today have been fishing well on other streams too. However today the trout wanted the sz 10 olive woolly bugger. Caught 7 on the bugger and had 1 each on the Royal Coachmen and March Brown wet.

As I fished the 3 flies into the first large hole, I noticed that several trout were rising. The risers continued to take flies off the surface as I searched underneath. It didn’t take long for me to re-rig for a dry fly. When the trout are rising you have to go with it.

Once I was ready to fish a dry, I found the trout in this hole were rising more and more. There were about 20 risers and I caught about 15 of them on a March Brown dry.

I continued to fish down through the stretch and into the next hole where I found even more risers. They were not real educated and were easy to convince. I was literally standing in one spot casting to 20 fish and new fish joined the party throughout. They were mostly rainbows in this stretch and they utilized all depths of water and were spread out. It was one of those days where it was just working. I used just 2 flies (after the first one started to sink). It was one of those miracle days. Most took the fly the first time they saw it.

As the day came to a close, many trout had been released and that group will be a little smarter next time around. Today it was nice to catch “a bunch” of trout on dries. It’s not the norm in NWPA. I usually provide my trout totals but I’m leaving it out because some might question the validity.


Also: Had a muskrat swim along the far bank near where I was casting. I haven’t seen a muskrat while fly fishing for a long times.

I was surprised to see at least 4 Night Hawks feeding over the water that I was fishing. They were so cool to watch. I haven’t seen one for years. I took some photos but they were very hard to track.
 

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Sugar Creek, Venango Co, 05-29-2025

Time Fished: 320pm - 845pm

Weather Conditions: 70 degrees, mixture of clouds and Sun

Water Conditions: 60 degrees, running higher than normal, a tinge of green

Insects: March Browns were hatching, but not in the same numbers as yesterday. I saw a few Caddis. The insect activity paled in comparison to yesterday.

I decided to start with 3 wets (olive woolly bugger, Royal Coachman wet, March Brown wet). For the first 200 yards I hit the same holes/pockets/riffles as yesterday and I didn’t have any strikes in places where they occurred yesterday. All of the locations were different which surprised me.

Once I got to the first nice hole the rainbows were ready. I probably had 10 strikes and caught 2 rainbows. It was at that point that I transitioned to dries. From a volume perspective, there was about 25% of the rising that we saw yesterday. However the ones that were rising today were tuned into the March Browns. I got 2 on a March Brown dry.

I went to the next hole downstream and more fish were active there. Rises were more sporadic than yesterday and it seemed like the sunny spells were possibly impacting the hatch dynamic. Also these fish were a little more educated than yesterday and they showed it. But in the end, 11 more were added to the anglers tally.

A long drought of 90 minutes occurred where I found it hard to get a strike. I chose to continue heading downstream to a location that was very productive 3-4 yrs ago. I had maybe 8-10 strikes during this time without a hookup.

I circled back upstream and picked off a few more trout, leaving me with 13 rainbows and 4 browns.

Actually a pretty good day but I expected a lot more given the hatch the day before and the willingness of the trout to be surface feeders (a bit of a rare occurrence for this stream but not terribly unusual)

I’ll take it.
 
That's so cool seeing the Night Hawks. I had the same experience with them on Penns Creek this week. It kinda freaked me out because I must have never seen them before. They came out just as the spinners got heavy at about 8:30. They flew like Kites (the birds) swooping all over the stream. The site bands on the wings stood out as they flew around.
 
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