W Valley Creek, Chester Co, 9/9/09

[PSUFishMenace]

Fished yesterday for about an hour (6-7 p.m) at the Valley Creek Farm property near the mouth of Broad Run. Air temp 68-70, water felt much colder than that! When I got there it wasn't raining, but around 6:30 it just absolutely unleashed, I didn't have any trees to protect me but I doubt it would have made much difference it was raining soooooooooo hard! So i just took my shirt off, stashed it in my pack to keep it dry, and kept fishing. Took advantage of the downpour to sneak into great position on the best hole in the stream, first cast with my trusty olive bugger BAM 13" brown! It put up a strong fight but nothing spectacular, I landed it and then released it quickly, nice fat healthy fish. I would have destroyed my phone in that kind of rain so no pic :-(

The rain let up just a little a few minutes later, but it was enough for the fish to see me, I watched them all scatter and didn't catch any more trout from that hole. I did catch a nice fallfish though (what a surprise...). I know I promised someone a picture but it was still raining too hard. 15 minutes later the rain turned to drizzle so I put my still dry shirt back on and held off the shivers for another ten minutes before leaving.

I was cold and soaked and hungry but happy- I've broken into double digits for trout in only my first year targeting them flyfishing.

Before the whole downpour thing happened I had hooked and quickly lost a nice rainbow and landed a decent (for W Valley) 9" smallmouth. Got a picture of him, see below. I feel like I probably would have gotten one or two more trout if I would have had time to get to some of the other pools but I wasn't willing to risk getting hypothermia for them.

My olive buggers are all officially mangled now.

 

[PSUFishMenace]

Going to add some more to this for today's trip rather than start a new thread.

Fished the upper end of DHALO from 4:15-6:45 this afternoon. When I arrived the water was higher and muddier than I expected it to be, vis maybe 8", but it cleared up some while I was there and before I left I could see down about 18". Water was obviously very cold from all the rain. There were some swarms of tiny light colored bugs above the slower sections, idk what they were.

started out at the big pool just below the regs boundary sign. My casting absolutely sucked for the first half hour, my god it was terrible! Even after adding weight to my black bugger to get it on the bottom, no strikes, so I moved down to the next big pool. suddenly I remembered how to cast and things improved. First I caught a 1" pebble-not a fish but it was a start. I spent an hour here and managed a 12" rainbow and a 13.5" brown. The brown put up a great fight, I thought it was a smallmouth until I saw it.

Observed one trout surface feeding near the tail of the pool. The rest I assume were hugging the bottom, that's where both of the ones I caught were. I was glad to get out and catch some nice fish after being kept inside by the rain.

Went back upstream for last hour, no more strikes.

Miraculously I did not catch any chubs of any kind.

Please excuse blurriness of picture

 

[PSUFishMenace]

Mariner here ya go!

Caught this on sunday 9/13.

Not a fallfish but close. I like this picture. 8" creek chub hehe

I also caught three trout 10-13" most I've gotten in one trip flyfishing. Unfortunately the last one stole my last black bugger as I was putting my phone away after getting a pic. tied on a cheap brown bugger which promptly unraveled and became a stiff purpley red worm:evil:. I don't think I'm getting any more flies at ****'s.

 

[salmo]

Where is the Valley Creek Farm located? I have only fished the Creek in the Park. Nice fishing and nice pictures.

 

[PSUFishMenace]

Just to be sure- Are you talking Valley Forge Park (since you capitalized Park...don't know if you intended to do that or not)? If so, this is a completely different stream.

If you are talking about the same stream I am, you must mean the East bradford township park. In that case, it is about a mile downstream from there at and continuing a few hundred yards downstream from the mouth of Broad Run. IDK if that's the actual name of the farm but that's what it says on a "posted" sign. Which is right above a sign that says "Fishing Permitted courtesy of landowner."

 

[PSUFishMenace]

BTW thanks I have more pictures but don't feel like posting them. I've posted enough pictures of stocked trout Sunday's fish were not much different. Although the brown I caught was beautiful for a stocker. I will put it in my avatar. edit: actually it looks really good on the computer so here it is: