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Lou Reichel and I arrived at the Allenberry Fisherman's Parking Lot at 2:30 PM to a sunny day with the temperature in the upper 70s. Alan Burrows and Chuck Dinkel had already gone down to the stream. While we were eating a sandwich and gearing up, David Berstein arrived. David and Lou went down to the stream about 3:10 while I waited for other arrivals. Soon, Bob Kaiser, Adam Nyzio, and Marc Hutzel showed up. Chuq Yang had sent a text message saying he would arrive about 4:30 - 5:00 PM.
Fishing from the start was slow with very few bugs which is normal prior to the start of the evening hatch. We saw an occasional Hex and an occasional white fly plus a few small caddis and some midges during the afternoon. Alan caught two rainbows and a brown on a pink san juan worm. He also reported one major splash but no take on a white fly. Chuck caught 6 (4 rainbows and 2 browns) and also LDRed a brown. Four were caught on a size 18 Frenchie and the other two on a size 16 green soft hackle. All fish were caught in the afternoon. Chuck reported that the hatch was light where they were fishing, upstream from us. There were some fish rising around 8pm, but none with any regularity. A PVFF friend of Chuck's who moved to PA about 5 years ago showed up at the stream to check the hatch. He did not fish but said he thought the white fly hatch would get better in the next week. Chuck also reported seeing "a few hex dancing", but no real numbers.
I've usually had success on past trips at this time of year with black beetles and/or ants but neither produced anything for me. I did get one strike and a couple of chases swinging a "one fly white fly" as a dropper with a small split shot off my beetle on top. I also tried a hex dry fly, pink san juan worm, bead head brassie, and bh crystal meth to no avail. Lou caught 3 (2 on the pink sj worm and one on Charlie Meck's floating white fly nymph. David caught a couple of minnows and had some activity with a grasshopper. Marc caught one but I can't remember what he caught it on. Chuq caught two minnows on a parachute adams, one was taken by a brown right in from of him (Does that count as an LDR?). He also caught 3 rainbows on a white dry fly and LDR'd 3 other fish. About 7:20, on the section the five of us were fishing, a few hexes started showing up and by 7:30 there were a fair number of hexes and white flies out but only occasional rises. I saw a couple of hex spinners go untouched on the water. However, by 8:00, there were more rising fish and more white flies out. With comparadun and parachute white flies, I had a bunch of rejections where fish would come up and look at my fly and sometimes follow it for 1-2 feet before going back down. At about 8:15, I put on a white fly spinner and had several strikes and finally caught a brown trout at 8:30 (it was too dark to try and take a photo).
All of us quit about 8:45. Lou, David, Chuq, and I stopped at Baker's for some food before heading home and a good time was has by all!
Thanks to Chuq for the last five of the following photos from the trip.
Ken Bowyer
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