A report from Jin for mikescatchreport.com
I fished the lower section of Valley Creek this morning hoping for a repeat of couple weeks ago when the bite was on.
Light showers covered the stream early in the morning and it was still overcast when I pulled in. The weather was a bit off with what felt like a front coming in but it rained just enough to keep anglers away but not enough to have an impact on the stream. Air temperature was in the high 80s and there were few, if any, bugs were in the air.
I decided to start fishing one of the deep pools with an X-Caddis. I could see couple fish holding down low and at least two fish were stting in an eddy chomping down food on the surface.
The first cast to the first fish on the lower end of the pool was good and it ended up on the end of my line. A nice fat brown almost 12 inches long, which is big for this stream. I let him go and covered the water with a couple casts to a fish further upstream. He finally ate my fly but managed to spit it out before I could set the hook.
Because the water was down there were fewer spots for fish to hold so I worked my way upstream and fished a couple of other pools and deep slots, catching more fish on top. There were some steady risers, which I covered with casts, but couldn’t get any of them to eat.
After I reached the next turn in the stream, I switched to a Caddis emerger. This was the ticket. It was much more productive nymphing than throwing dries. I landed a handful of fish and decided to walk back down to the first pool to see if I could rustle up one of the big ones sitting on the bottom but the big boys showed no interest. However I managed to get a couple of their smaller cousins before calling it a day.
DIRECTIONS: Valley Forge National Park is open 6am-10pm. From Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and points southeast use U.S. 202 north to U.S. 422 west. From U.S. 422 west take Route 23 west for 1.8 miles then turn left at the exit ramp and merge to the center lane. The entrance to Valley Forge National Park is straight ahead.