I fished Pine Creek with Jim today from 9:00 am to about 4:00 pm. We started at the Gamma Building Flats and then stayed there because we believe that “you shouldn’t leave fish to find fish.” There were plenty of fish at the Flats. Altogether we caught 22 trout, four smallmouth bass, and one large sucker. Yes, we count fish and we’re competitive. Jim had the best numbers today. We only saw four other anglers all day. The water was clear and cold.
The stream gage was at 4.46 feet at 8:00 am and the water temperature was 46 degrees. That’s why we were surprised when Jim caught this nice smallmouth bass around 9:00 am. It took a mop fly.
Flies that worked the best today were a #14 mop fly, a #14 blood dot egg, a #14 prince nymph, and a #8 wooly bugger. We used flyrods with a 9 ft, to 5x leader and no added weight. The current was slow at the Flats making it difficult to get a good drift. Jim’s solution to that was to put more line on the water to help the fly move downstream. That was pretty effective. Another angler who fished with us for a few hours used a spinning rod and Joe’s Flies to catch a few trout. The fish were all nice sized rainbows like this one.