W. Valley Creek, Chester County, 5/15/10

[PSUFishMenace]

Fished the club-stocked water downstream from the Dhalo from 11 a.m-2 p.m. today. I was hoping the storms last night were enough to make the water off-color as that's when I do best on this stream. The storms really didn't do anything except maybe make the water a little colder, the water was crystal clear. Luckily though the club just stocked last night and there were pods of dumb brook trout everywhere. There was a lot of surface activity, I didn't notice any specific bugs in decent numbers and I think the freshly stocked trout were just hitting anything that looked remotely edible. I watched a few hit little red plant buds floating by.

I ended up with 7 brook trout and one small rainbow. I caught the first on a size 12 royal wulff, the next on an olive bugger (unweighted), and the rest on either GRHE or BHPT nymphs. The Brookies were flat-out refusing the bugger in slow water, and I tried a tan EHC for a while that got absolutely no response. Everything else got crushed. The brook trout were 8-13" and the rainbow was maybe 10". I had a lot of fun today and feel like I learned a lot just watching how the fish reacted to different flies and presentations. I even spent about an hour going after one particular fish (I NEVER do that) just because I enjoyed watching it react and I wanted to try to get it on a dry fly. I missed it a few times with the wulff but eventually took it with a nymph. It was 12" and fought like crazy, and I got it all on video. Very rewarding day.

Edited to add some pics:

 

[mute]

Very awesome, good report. I fished the dhalo section after i fished the east branch. For some reason i dont like that section. It seems to me its just 2 very big deep holes. Atleast thats where i pulled off and followed the trail into the woods. Im sure thers more access points to possibly more dhalo water. I just havent found it yet.

Post up the video when you get a chance!

 

[PSUFishMenace]

Thanks, I can't post the video unfortunately, I have tons of short clips that I'm going to make into one longer video when I get the proper editing software. Right now they are just quicktime movie files that basic windows programs can't do anything with. However I can make pictures out of specific video frames and then post those, sometimes they turn out pretty sweet!

I don't like the Dhalo section either. I only fish it when it's raining and the water is almost chocolate brown because I know I will have those two pools to myself. The rest of that section is pretty unappealing to me.