Members' Adventures and Stories
"A wealth of member news, notes, observations, fly fishing secrets, the streams we
fish and the people we fish with."
Please e-mail your stories to whiteclayflyfishers@yahoo.com.
Tulpehocken Fishing
As great as the fishing is on the Tulpehocken, remember to lock your car and keep valuables out of site. My neighbor and I fished the area last week and police were everywhere. It
seems two cars were broken into upstream and officers were looking for clues.
The morning fishing was great! I spoke to a gentleman at the second bridge who claimed a 30 fish morning using tricos (very, very small). Fish were not rising in large numbers as at our club outing, as the water was murky from a previous storm. However I could see large fish in the water feeding on emergers. It was my friend’s first trip and he could not believe the quality of the fishery. He saw one large carp that resembled a small submarine. We will try it again soon.
~Larry Yates-
A Memorable day on the White Clay Creek
On August 1st, I decided to get in a little early fishing on the Delaware fly section before doing some yard work. Since I got there early and the parking lot was closed I had to park along the road.
After getting my fishing gear on I started to walk through the parking lot but I stopped as I looked upon about 2 dozen rabbits milling around in the lot. Off to my left, in the meadow, I saw the grass moving and I thought to myself here comes a fox stalking these rabbits. I waited and suddenly out comes a mink running into the lot. Well the rabbits scattered like a covey of quail, and the mink ran across the lot and disappeared into the brush. That is the first mink I have seen on the White Clay and it should have been a clue that this was going to be a memorable day on the creek.
I walked towards the Pennsylvania line to fish a pool about 200 yards down stream from the old bridge abutments. When I got to the pool, there sat a large blue heron already fishing. I entered the pool, the heron did not fly away at first, and proceeded to catch a variety of fish: small mouth bass, large mouth bass, sun fish, and rock bass. There is something going on in the gene pool at this location with the rock bass.
Their coloration is normal for about three quarters of the body but the last quarter is a brilliant white. Other rock bass that I caught that day further down stream were normal. I continued to fish down stream and caught brown trout, pan fish and bass (yes on the green weenie). I also saw a couple of water snakes and a muskrat as I proceeded down stream.
It was getting close to 9 am so I decided to go to the “O’Donnell pool” and fish for the last 20 min before going home. I made a cast into the sunlit upper portion of the pool and noticed a large fish moving towards the fly (yes, again on a green
weenie). The fish sucked the fly down and proceeded slowly down stream. After about 10 min (seemed like half hour) I netted a smallmouth bass between 17”-18” in length and fat as a pig. That is the largest small mouth that I have ever taken in the White Clay creek fly-stretch. I snapped a couple of pictures (now on the WCO picture board) and released the fish. I decided to call it quits right then and
there. A memorable day indeed!
~Ed O’Donnell-
The Dry Hare’s Ear
This fly, the Dorato Hair’s Ear, is one of the best dry flies that I’ve ever used. I’m surprised that I don’t see more anglers (other than myself) using it. On the water, it is as “buggy” as they come. The fly looks as if it’s about to take off. But, the design allows the body to float in the film. Because of this, it water logs rapidly. One needs to carry some extras. It is also helpful to treat each fly with something like “Watershed” immediately after tying.
The Dorato is tied in three variations, a light, a medium tan and a dark. The version that I will describe here is the medium or tan version. By the way, I have found a green-weenie version of this to be good when the apple green caddis is around. Just tie it with spikey green dubbing and blue dun hackle in sizes 16 and 18.
Tying recipe:
Tight lines,
~John Zimny -
Fishing the Octararo
We were fishing Wednesday evening on the Octararo and hooked into several big rainbows. They were from 20 to 25 inches in length.
Jason, my son, set us up with 2 size 24 emergers that we ran along the stretch downstream from the bridge. They were gray, brown and green in color and were set up 4 feet from the strike indicator with
one size 4 BB shot above the top fly.
The flies were set 12 inches apart from the bottom. I have to say it wasn't long before we both hit into some remarkable rainbows. The best was when Jason was playing one that was trying to take him under a tree branch. The trout was so active that when it jumped, it almost hit Jason in the head. We laughed as I thought it was going to end up in his waders.
In our 20 years of fishing this was truly one of the best moments we experienced together.
Happy Fishing,
~Dennis and Jason Boyko-
