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Little
Lehigh in the Cold Little
Lehigh REDUX Little
Lehigh Heritage
H2O Brookies fishing
buddy unbelievable a
couple of hours
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Little
Lehigh Creek—Rewards for
November, 2004 To celebrate both my father's and my birthday, we decided to break in his gift, a Cabela's 9' 6wt. Stowaway rod and reel combo. Though more suited to the Rappahannock smallmouths that are a short drive from his house, it served well for the roll casts needed on the Little Lehigh. The brief couple of years that I have been a "serious" fly fisherman have given me a decent amount of experience as it relates to being able to read water, understanding hatches in the broad sense, and being able to cast to feeding fish in tough situations. Fishing the Little Lehigh is in one sense very "easy" though the wild n' wily trout that abound are no pushovers. These guys see a ton of flies and require extremely light tippet--nothing heavier than 7x on a clear day. As it was described to me by Rod at the Little Lehigh Fly Shop, the difference between no fish and a couple of fish is 6x vs. 7x; a couple of fish and a few fish is 7x vs. 8x; and a few fish and a lot of fish is 8x vs. 9x. Lightweight tippets aside, presentation is the biggest key in this game. Drifts and mends must be also be dead-on while making sure you stick with the drift all the way through the swing as you'll get a good number of hits here, especially when fishing a nymph or something in the film. Tippet is not the only thing that needs to be small. Flies on this creek are measured with a benchmark of size 20 being large in most cases. The second day I fished here, I tied on a size 26 Al's Rat and hooked-up almost immediately, even after another fish took a nip at the indicator. Make sure you visit the Little Lehigh Fly Shop and talk to the gentlemen who really know their "stuff." Though you stand a better chance with the little guys, it's not the only thing they'll take a whack at--I was getting strikes on a size 12 Ausable Wulff. I witnessed a lady downstream from me hook-up twice using a size 12 or elk-wing caddis which looked more like a stimulator than a hatch-matcher. This proved to me that if your casts were accurate, your drifts dead, and your fly worthy, success would be had. Though light tippet and small flies may bring many strikes, you really need to target and cast to the larger fish for success. Most of the larger fish that showed themselves were against the far bank where it would have been impossible to make a cast from anywhere but the opposite side where I was standing. It's a fairly long cast with so much water in between, so, you had only a couple of seconds of dead drift before the line started to drag the fly, ruining any halfway decent presentation. The fish that far out had not had so much line thrown over their heads as most people were throwing 3 and 4 weight lines. Where this would have been perfectly normal on a normal day, these two days were not. There were strong downstream winds having their ways with lightweight lines. I, on the otherhand, was chucking 5-weight line with a 9' high modulus Fran Betters Custom. Being able to rifle line through that wind brought me strikes on more casts than not, but, with so much line out, it was near impossible to set the hook (that's my story, and I'm sticking with it!). The Little Lehigh might not be a "destination" fly fishing location, but, it's definitely a local gem. With about as many wild trout as any other stream in Pennsylvania, it's got more than location going for it. If you don't mind fishing right next to someone, don't mind casual passers by, a little road noise, and finicky trout--put the Little Lehigh on your "must fish" list when you're in the area. |
