West Valley Creek, Chester County, 7-26-08

[Mariner]

First time trout fishing in PA for me. Wow, what a good time. W. Valley was fairly cool and cleared out perfectly from a heavy rain two days ago. I hit the section below the train tunnel and spooked two. At the Boot Road section across from the West Whiteland pump station I bushwhacked into a long straight section with a few elbow pools and skinny runs.

I ran into a local fellow who said there was a club that ran a private hatchery until this spring and decided to stock their brood stock of fish in addition to the usual spring alottment. I don't know how good his info was, or if this is typical, but I saw three browns and two rainbows all in the 19-23" range with beat up fins, jagged tails, scars and pale colors. Looked like classic 4y.o. hatchery fish to me.

I managed to coax two fat little stocker 11" rainbows out from a cutbank on a black tungsten wool leech and a copper john. I got one nice 13" native brown on the leech and managed to get one of the monster browns to come out of listlessness on the bottom and take a whack at it but didn't hook.

A guy down from me was having luck on dead-drifted muddler minnows and said wool-head sculpins worked well earlier.

No bugs whatsoever. Two snakes though. Very tight fishing. I was using a 6' rod and found myself kneeling mid-current to lower my profile. Tunnel fishing. Lost more flies than ever today.

Thanks to LesTrout for the tips.

 

[chstrcntyfish]

Sounds like a good trip to me. If your looking for wild fish make sure you check out valley. I had no idea that west valley could still be any good this time of year. In meck's book, he mentions that you have a good chance of catching a stream bred fish late in the year. Those big fish were most likely from the early stocking they did in the winter. They put all huge fish in there any the brandywine. February on the brandywine was some good cold weather action as long as you had midges and warm clothes. Those are the leftover fish from then. Sounds like they aren't doing too good.