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Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations

Rick Nyles

Fly Fisher, Guide, Fly Tier

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Rick Nyles started guiding in 1999 and has since grown his guide service to eight guides in Pennsylvania. His knowledge of Pennsylvania fisheries is deep and wide. Join us to talk about a few of the top Pennsylvania fisheries you want to add to your bucket list.

Just a few of the questions asked and answered during the interview:

  • What books can you recommend that detail Pennsylvania waters?
  • I'm coming to fish in Pennsylvania for the first time where should I go to maximize my trip?
  • Where and when should I go to hit the Green Drake hatch?
  • How do the state laws affect public access to the rivers and creeks?
  • I want to swing wet flies to increase my fish numbers; where should I go to do this?
  • What rivers or streams are the best for smallmouth bass fishing?
  • What are the prime waters in the State College area?
  • What's Penns Creek known for most?
  • What are the top flies that you recommend for fishing Pennsylvania waters?
  • What river would you fish in the Johnstone area?
  • How do you get away from the crowds?
  • What are the top rivers and creeks in Eastern Pennsylvania?
  • What species of trout is Pennsylvania known most for?
  • What are your tips for fishing the Lehigh River?

Rick Nyles
Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations
Rick Nyles Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations




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Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations

with Rick Nyles

D. Roger Maves: Welcome to Ask About Fly Fishing Internet Radio your source for learning more about fly fishing in cold water, warm water and salt water. Hello, I'm Roger Maves, your host for tonight's show on this broadcast, we'll be featuring Rick Nyles and he'll be answering your questions on the Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations.

This show will be 90 minutes in length. We're broadcasting live over the internet. If you'd like to ask Rick a question, just go to our homepage at askaboutflyfishing.com and use the Q&A text box to send us your question. We'll receive your question immediately and we'll try to answer as many of them as possible on the show tonight.

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In fact, if you have a moment do right now and let other people know about the great things that are happening over here, the content of this broadcast is copyright into the property of The Knowledge Group, Inc. doing businesses, Ask About Fly Fishing. When we return, we'll be talking with Rick Nyles about Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations.

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D. Roger Maves: Before we introduce Rick, we'd like to let you know about the great prizes we have to give away tonight on our drawing tonight, we'll be giving away a one year membership to Fly Fisher's International and a one year subscription to the Fly Fishing and Tying Journal.

So you have two chances to win tonight in our drawing. Now, if you haven't registered yet for the drawing, you can do so now, just go to our homepage at askaboutflyfishing.com and look for the link on a Rick section that says register for our free drawing. Click on that link and fill out the form, and we'll announce the winners at the end of the show.

We'll also be giving away a book courtesy of Stackpole Books, and here's how you can win a Stackpole book. You must be the first person to answer the question we ask at the end of the show. And the question will be something that Rick and I talk about during the shows and just submit your answer along with your name and location, using that text box on our homepage. It's the same text box that you'll use during the show to ask questions. So listen closely, take lots of notes type fast, and maybe you'll win a book from Stackpole Books.

Our guest tonight is Rick Nyles. Rick has been fly fishing for over 40 years and started guiding in 1999. The business grew. Rick decided to start Sky Blue Outfitters. Sky Blue Outfitters has grown to be the most comprehensive guide service in Pennsylvania.

His staff of eight guides has well over a hundred years of guiding experience in over 170 years of combined fly fishing in Pennsylvania. Sky Blue Outfitters offers day drift boat and overnight package trips in Pennsylvania. They have guided clients from around the country. They host trips to Montana, Idaho Baja, Labrador, Outer Banks, and New York.

Rick is an accomplished fly tier who is also known for his CDC patterns, his simple approach to fly tying and fly tying techniques. Rick placed third in Orvis fly tying contest by entering his unique Green Drake pattern. Rick developed and started selling his own wing material called Up Dn Trout. The material is a great alternative to CDC and has similar floating characteristics. Another benefit is it is easier to use than CDC.

Rick, welcome to Ask About Fly Fishing internet radio.

Rick Nyles: Oh, thank you.

D. Roger Maves: Good to have you tonight.

Rick Nyles: Yes, its a little late. It's past my bedtime. late for me in the east coast, right?

D. Roger Maves: Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. We try to accommodate all the time zone, but it's a little tough almost to the east coast, but you guys are always used to staying up later than us on the west. I think your news starts later and everything out there.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Anyway, we'll get through it. So we're talking about Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations. And as we were talking before the show, I'm just amazed at all the fisheries in Pennsylvania.

So many high quality waters there. And you had told me something that I'd like you to share with the folks out there. I didn't realize how great a state it was for fly fishing, but tell people about your ranking.

Rick Nyles: Pennsylvania and the lower 48 has the most running water of any state, Alaska beats us. But down here in the lower 48, I forget the number. I think it's 28,000 miles of water that runs through Pennsylvania now. Not all trout waters, of course, but there's just an abundance of water. I can walk to three trout streams from my house where I live. And I'm in Southeastern PA near Philadelphia.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: Not like I'm way out in the middle of nowhere in the upper state. I'm an hour from Philadelphia.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. So even close to major Metropolitan City. There's great fly fishing. Yeah. Terrific.

Rick Nyles: Interesting. We're talking about that right now. Valley Forge Park has Valley Creek running through it down in Philadelphia. That's a class A in trout stream. There's wild brown trout in there.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: And they stock it and they just have their own population.

D. Roger Maves: That's great. That's great. We've got a ton of water to cover, so to speak tonight.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: But first I'd like to, we've got a bunch of general questions come in, from our audience about fly fishing in Pennsylvania, and some techniques and so forth too. So I'd like to try to run through those first. And then I'd like to run through some of the top picks you have for, for creeks and rivers in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania. And we've got a whole bunch of them there and we'll try to get through as many as we can. Some of them people may know very well or have heard about and others maybe off the grid, so to speak.

So let's get started on these general questions and a couple more came in while we were gearing up here, but let's start running through this. Chuck in Placerville, California asked, “Do you have any recommendations on books or reference materials, which detail the Pennsylvania water?”

Rick Nyles: There's three good books out there. Keystone. The one we talked about before the show, that's a pretty good comprehensive book. And then there's Tom Gilmore's book Fly Fisher's Guide to Pennsylvania. That's a good book. And then the first book that I'm aware of that really wrote about all the streams is Dwight Landis's book. And that was written about 20 years ago.

Maybe even farther back. I think all three of them are available on Amazon.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: So you can buy 'em there.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. Okay. Good.

Rick Nyles: That's good, that's the one I helped with Tom Gilmore with his book on certain streams. Keystone has more streams in it.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: But Tom has more details on where to go.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. Covering so much water. It's hard to put a lot of detail all in one book, you know that the Keystone book is what? 586 pages.

Rick Nyles: Yeah, exactly.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. And you still, like you say, may not have all the details that one would like, but it just started anyway on some of these rivers.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Chuck, same guy, Chuck in Placerville, California. He says “I’m planning my first trip to fish, Pennsylvania. What river or body of water should I focus on to maximize my trip?” I might just defer to this, to what we'll talk about later. And unless you want to highlight a couple of those now for a first trip, where might he land and start out from? Maybe that's a good place to start.

Rick Nyles: Just recently. I don't know who did this survey, but, or listing State College area, which we're going to talk about a lot later was named in the top 25 trout waters in the United States.

Again, right in the middle of the State where State College is located. We'll talk in more detail later, but that to me is the center of the bullseye is out there.

D. Roger Maves: Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah. Good suggestion. Dee Hako in Western Pennsylvania says, “Would you talk about the Green Drake hatch on Pine Creek?” Now that's not one of the ones we were going to talk about and he says, but what other PA streams have Green Drake hatches worth mentioning maybe you can, and you, we spoke in your bio about your Green Drake pattern. So, I want to speak to that in general, in Pennsylvania, about Green Drake hatch.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. Pine Creek does have the Green Drake hatch. It's very sporadic. It's not known as an intense hatch or heavy hatch. It can be in certain areas. It's not, there's better streams than that. That have it. It is splattered throughout the State College area.

To me, Penns Creek has the heaviest hatch.

D. Roger Maves: Penns Creek. Okay.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. And I'm also surprised on some of the smaller streams I've encountered Green Drake hatches on streams. I didn't think they were there.

D. Roger Maves: What's the time of year for the Green Drake?

Rick Nyles: Oh, it could be anywhere from the third week. It's a short hatch period and it usually travels up to stream once it starts.

So it can be one week on one stream, lower hatch amount over a two week period. But generally Memorial Day is prime Green Drake. Week after that and the week before is usually when it's the most intense, but it's just like any other hatch. You got to be at the right place at the right time.

D. Roger Maves: Hard to time that when you're coming from out of state sometimes

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Like salmonfly hatches.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. Like stonefly hatches too. I think in my whole career of fishing, I only hit 'em three times, but when you do they're great.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Bob Garman in Philadelphia says “Any thoughts on the fish commission's practice of stocking rainbows in wild brown trout streams.”

Rick Nyles: I'm involved with the Pennsylvania trout unlimited and also my local chapter.

And that's one of the main focuses right now here in the state. What we're trying to do our native trout is the Brook trout, so we're focusing in on that, that we do not want while our native Brook trout streams stocked with Rainbows or Browns. The fish commission here in the state, just put through a proposal to eliminate that.

So we're hoping that's going to pass with comments from the fishing community, as far as stocking Rainbows over Browns. They're one of the things here in Pennsylvania, there's a lot of bait fishermen. So they do like to catch fish and take 'em out. I like the fact that they're stocking. I'm just guessing here, 90% rainbows, you know, the words out. If you catch a rainbow, generally it's stocked take it, but that's what you want to do. I'm strictly catch and release my whole business is, but there's so many wild brown trout streams here. I agree with you. There are streams. I got one close to me. They stock it and I wish they wouldn't. It has much enough habitat and to sustain a really good brown trout fishery.

I wish they wouldn't stock it, but all the income for the fish commission is based on license sales. So they do not get any money from the state, so they need to sell licenses. And so it's like a catch 22 type scenario.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. And the license is to some is a license to keep, and that's why they fish and…

Rick Nyles: Yeah,

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. Tell me this because we have a private lake up here in Colorado that I have access to because of where I live, but, and we have to stock that periodically and we looked into stocking some Browns in the lake and found that the price of Browns or stocking was, I don't know, it was three or four times, the price of rainbows is, do you know anything about that or are they harder to raise?

Rick Nyles: No, I really, really don't. I don't get into that part of it. It just, I think the rainbows I know here locally, there was a stream we were putting fingerlings in and it's a release from a dam and it's a delayed harvest, which means after a certain day, June 15th, you're allowed to keep fish. And the reason being the water gets too warm, but they will hold over and they will live through the summer.

And what we were doing was stocking small five inch fingerlings. So these guys would be 13 inches. We'd stock them in the fall. They'd be eight to 11 inches in the spring. They made it through the summer. They'd be 13 inches or more. And if they made it through the next year, they'd be in the 15, 18 inch range. They grow faster. I think brown trout don't get as big, faster. I think the rainbows get bigger, faster.

D. Roger Maves: Maybe that's something to do with it.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. Yeah. I think that might be, I'll have to,

D. Roger Maves: I'll have to ask the hatchery guy and next time I get a chance and find out why that is, but could be a Colorado thing too, but,

Rick Nyles: could be

D. Roger Maves: Yeah, Moriel from Baltimore asks, “I once went fishing on the Schuylkill…”

Rick Nyles: Schuylkill

D. Roger Maves: Schuylkill. Okay, you might have to correct me a couple of times.

Rick Nyles: Yeah, that's right. We have Indian names here too. So…

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. Schuylkill, Okay. “There was an easy, obvious place to park and walk down to the river. And while I was on the river, someone came to tell me I was on private property. I apologize said I didn't realize that. And they gave me permission to stay on the river. Is there a good resource to find out about allowed public access for river in Pennsylvania?”

Rick Nyles: That the Schuylkill first of all, falls under the colonial law that you could navigate or do commercial enterprise on it. So once you have access to it, and there's a bunch of bigger rivers, just like this here in the state, once you have access to it, you're allowed within the high water mark.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: But that's only on rivers that they did commerce on move coal, move lumber, moved oil, whatever they were, the resources they were taking to Philly or Pittsburgh or whatever. So it's not like Montana. Once you're in the water, any water, you can go where you want, as long as you stay in the high water mark so you really just have to look for posted no trespassing signs.

Now what this gentleman ran into was a typical landowner. You be polite. You ask, they let you fish. And I think, they're trying to keep away anybody who's throwing litter things like that.

I don't know the whole situation, what he got into, but if he found a parking area and he could get into the river and there was no yellow posted signs or purple ribbons around the tree.

He had full access to that river. And once he's in it, he can go up and down that river from Philadelphia up to the coal regions, they can't stop you.

D. Roger Maves: So the law is not navigable rivers, but rivers that were used for commons, it could be a difference.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. The Delaware, the upper Delaware, which is a great trout fisher, the Lehigh river, the Schuylkill River, Lackawana River, Allegheny the ones around Pittsburgh, all the big rivers where they move lumber stuff.

D. Roger Maves: Right. Okay.

Rick Nyles: That you would float to Susquehanna for smallmouth, Juniata yeah.

D. Roger Maves: What is the law for rivers that don't fall under that category?

Rick Nyles: It can't be posted. If it's posted private property, you don't have access unless you get permission. Okay. And the property owner can own both sides of the stream.

And that it's not like Montana, where you have 15 feet of easement on either side of the bridge you're allowed in. You could stay in the high-water marks, not that way, unless it's one of the big rivers that we follow Montana law. Yeah. It's been through the courts in and out of the courts for years. So they, yeah. Think 15 years ago they settled it.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah, it sounds more like Colorado where if it's navigable and if you can float a boat on. Then you can fish it, but you can't stop on private property. You can't anchor. Can't touch bottom. You can just go through it and fish, but that's it.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. Yeah. We, like we say, nobody owns the water.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Nyles: Just like nobody owns the air

D. Roger Maves: Except in Colorado. The ranchers on the Eastern planes own the water

Rick Nyles: Oh, really? Yeah. For irrigation.

D. Roger Maves: We send it to LA and Las Vegas and they own part of the water, but yeah. So anyway, it depends on what side of the hill you are.

Dino, in Michigan, asks “Are there any streams or areas where swinging wet flies excels for numbers or quality of fish?”

Rick Nyles: Everywhere.

D. Roger Maves: Everywhere. Okay.

Rick Nyles: With fly fishing. I have one of my guides he's well known here in the state for wet fly fishing. Dave Allbaugh he sells leaders. He has DVDs and he really got me into wet fly fishing. And I'll tell you what he does it 99% of the time when he's out for trout with clients,

D. Roger Maves: Is he?

Rick Nyles: That's what he likes to do. And it's just the bigger waters of course, is where you want to do it. And the key thing, fishing them is cutting them down. So you need sinking line.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: But

D. Roger Maves: Just sinking tip or like intermediate sinking or,

Rick Nyles: Yeah, intermediate, not all the way down to the bottom about halfway. And you're allowed to use three flies, so you can do a three rig setup so I can go on and on about that. But the question. Is tough because you're asking about numbers, but wet fly fishing, produces numbers. It really does. Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: If there's a hatch going on, they're chasing up those emerges. And of course, nymphing does well too. And so does dry fly fishing, but I like if there's some bugs and it's not real heavy hatch, it's very sporadic. That's when I start swinging when

D. Roger Maves: Okay. Okay. All right, Rick, take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get back into some of these questions and , see if we can get 'em answered. So hang tight. Be right back.

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D. Roger Maves: You're listening to Ask About Fly Fishing internet radio. We're talking with Rick Nyles about Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations. If you'd like to ask Rick a question, just go to our homepage and fill the form out there. And we'll try to get an answer for you tonight on the show.

Rick, tell me about what's going on in your fly fishing world. Tell folks about your business and other things you might be doing, your latest on fly fishing.

Rick Nyles: Oh, okay. Name of the business is Sky Blue Outfitters. We're based here of course in Pennsylvania, I have a staff of eight guides, me one of 'em and over the years I built the business up slowly.

I just wanted to make sure I got the right staff to support the business. And the nice thing is how we put it together is that we all have different disciplines and I'm known for dry fly fishing in my dry. Dave Allbaugh, I'd mentioned about wet flies, Dave Rothrock, who's a casting guru, Taylor Helbig, he's our young gun. Guess what? He's into euro nymphing, and all that type of the new technology and the new techniques and also musky fishing and things like that. He's really into that stuff. And then Derek Eberly, he's another champion flycaster and I have Bill Nolan, he's a drift boat guide for me in the Lehigh and the Susquehanna, he worked with wounded warriors was running the program here in the state for a while. And then Brian Shumaker, he floats the Juniata river and the Susquehanna. I mentioned the Susquehanna earlier. That's a smallmouth fishery and it has some big smallmouth in third, one of the best smallmouth rivers here in the east and then I had Shane Becker, he was a competition fly fisherman, and he's also into the newer techniques like George Daniel teaches in his books.

So I think that we have a good crew together, rounded somebody calls, and they want a, we fly fish where we hook him up with Dave. That's what we do. As far as the business, we do day trips, of course, and we do drift boat trips on the Lehigh River for trout, and then Susquehanna, Juniata for a smallmouth.

We're starting to get into some lake fishing for largemouth bass and for pike. So we're doing that out in central Pennsylvania, where my one guide Dave lived, we do package trips here in the state, out on the Juniata river, little Juniata river, near Johnstown, which is east of Pittsburgh, couple hours. And then in the State College area, I lease a farmhouse on a trout stream runs right on the property.

It even runs under a covered bridge on the property, Big Fishing Creek. So I run packages out there. There's two night packages and three night packages. It's lodging guiding food, show up with your gear and your license, jump in our car and we take care of you. So I've been doing those type trips for 15 years, and then of course we do destination trips.

I just had a group up in Labrador. We're up there for the big Brookies and we had a ball except getting up and back with air Canada. That's a whole another story. I've been running trips to . I've been running trips to Montana, in fact, and now west there, in fact, I'm going out to Idaho and on September 10th, I'll be out there for two weeks.

I have a group of five coming in. We're going to fish Henry's fork and wherever the guides are going to take us. And that group leaves and I have another group coming in and next year I got two trips to Montana. And one trip to a Baja, Mexico. We're going to go down there for rooster fish and that's our goal for that.

So I'm putting together a list for trips for 2024 now and working out the details. That's what we do here. And we said earlier, comprehensive guide service. I think that's what we are. We're we've been doing this a long time. I've been doing it a long time and we got it all worked out. And as far as the,

D. Roger Maves: What's your website address so people can find you.

Rick Nyles: Oh yeah, it's www.skyblueoutfitters.com.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. skyblueoutfitters.com.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Terrific.

Rick Nyles: And then me personally, I'm on the board of a local chapter here at perfume and valley TU. I'm also the Southeastern Pennsylvania regional VP for the state council of Trout Unlimited. One unique thing we do is Chris Wood, the CEO of Trout Unlimited. He comes up here to my farmhouse on big fishing Creek and we auction off fishing with Chris Wood.

So it's a fundraiser. We do things like that, support a lot of other chapters and try and help them raise money.

D. Roger Maves: Nice.

Rick Nyles: So that's mine. I'm really involved with TU.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah, I hear he's quite the fly fisher and quite the men were traveling. Yeah.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. He's a good guy. Somehow we got hooked up and we become friends, but it was interesting when he was up last year, he loves the cast far. He will, he only really have the cast. A lot of this streams. If you can cast 30 feet up here in 40 feet, you're going to catch fish. He would move away to 60, 70 feet. He just liked to bomb that's fly out there. It was funny.

D. Roger Maves: Just like casting. Yeah.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. He says, Hey, I live in Arlington, Virginia. He. I only get the fish big water usually.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: He's usually casting that way. He's a good guy.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. That comes in handy when you go down to the salt.

Rick Nyles: So that's true. that's

D. Roger Maves: Yeah, I have, I have to work on that. Every time I go from Colorado down to Belize or somewhere I’ve got to work it.

Rick Nyles: Well, and the same way here, I can just wrist cast most of the streams and

D. Roger Maves: yeah, I know.

Rick Nyles: I get some place where I got to bomb one out there. I got to teach myself to double haul every time takes me a while to get it. Cause I don't do it.

D. Roger Maves: Well. Good. Well, thanks for sharing all that about what's going on in your world. Appreciate that. And sounds like you’ve got just a fantastic crew there of guides.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: And got everything covered. That's great. That's great. Let's jump back into questions here. This is kind of wide open, but I'll see where you go with this. So, Bob Garman in Philadelphia asks, “What fly patterns do you consider a must for fishing, Pennsylvania streams?”

Rick Nyles: Boy, when you send me that question, I sat there and rack, rack my brain a little bit.

What flies would I just take if I had to choose four flies? And my thought came to the, a March brown, which is a size 14 mayfly. I think it can be used as a Hendrickson here where we get 'em the March brown to Isonychia in the fall and Slate Drakes during the summer. Then I thought tan caddis size 16. There you go.

Blue winged olive size, 18 and a Sulfur or PMD. If I had to put four flies in my box, that's what I would do. Notice the green Drakes. Not on there.

D. Roger Maves: Cause they're not around all the time. Right?

Rick Nyles: You got that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And believe me, when the word gets out, the green Drake is hatching. Good luck finding a spot.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Nyles: How you stay away. I'll be, yeah. Yeah. I'll be somewhere remote catching a little native book trout somewhere.

D. Roger Maves: Well, there you go, Bob. I hope that helps you out there. Notice they were sounded like those were all duns.

Rick Nyles: Well, yeah. I'm a dry fly guy.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So variations of those below or at the surface might work too, huh?

Rick Nyles: Yeah. I was thinking it would be the whole family of that mayfly whether the nymph .

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Right.

Rick Nyles: And the dun.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah, exactly. And it's amazing because most of those are, would be the same flies you might use in Colorado or Montana.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: It's pretty common all over.

Rick Nyles: Oh yeah. I'm going to tie up some Isonychia is basically, I'm going to tie up March Browns.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: To take out there to Idaho. And one of my guide secrets is I tie up a lot of Hendricksons, which is a lighter pinkish body. And I don't buy many March Browns. And the reason being, I carry a brown magic marker with me, if I want to March brown, I just get at that al color of the Hendrickson. I got a March Brown.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. All right. Dave in Connecticut wants to know. And also Randy, from Mississippi, both are asking about smallmouth bass. Where should you go? What time of the year should you go?

Rick Nyles: The smallmouth bass here, the best fishing is the Susquehanna river, Harrisburg and north. And then there's a big river called the Juniata. Brian, my guide that goes there.

And so does Bill, but. Brian Shumaker that goes there. He likes to do a little bit of the Juniata where mostly on the Juniata and get into the Susquehanna. As far as when to come. He's not a big fan of fishing when they're spawning, even though it's allowed, I would say June, usually into November now right now is primo it's poppers and Clouser Minnows.

And right now the white fly is coming off, which is a white mayfly. And it is the most intense hatch you'll ever see. So there's 2000 flies out there. You throw yours out there. Good luck getting that fish to take yours, but people go for it all the time. If they start coming off sporadically, you can catch fish, but it usually is a into the darkness type hatch.

And there's actually been car accidents on the bridges. It's that heavy.

D. Roger Maves: That thick. Wow.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it can be really thick, but Susquehanna and it's on a regular basis. You should get a good four-pound smallmouth.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. Okay. David in Colorado wants to know. He says, evidently he's having a tough time seeing rising trout.

He says, “What's the best way to see rising trout. I have polarized glasses. Others seem to see them rising and I'm missing it. Any suggestions?”

Rick Nyles: I'm a dry fly guy and I do presentation that shows and I have photographs of different rises it. First of all, I would say, make sure you're standing somewhere where you don't have glare and how I recognize fish rising in faster water.

I'm looking for a splash of water upstream. Okay. So if you're looking. To find a fish in little choppier water, maybe coming into a big pool. You want to look for that splash upstream. So that's one way, the other way is boy, sometimes they just bring their nose out and it's a dimple and it looks like it might be just a pine cone, tumbling down the Creek, but it's not.

And the bigger fish I've learned, I got some nice videos of this. You'll see their dorsal and tail come up. It's not a splashy rise. Big fish don't really make splashy rises. They'll make real big, subtle circular rises. Okay. But they're not ones that come splashing up. Usually that's the smaller fish or it's a fish that's racing up from the bottom pretty far and going back down so that polarized glasses are definitely going to help you.

But most of the time, I have a lot of clients that say the same thing, their fly will be floating you down and officially that the hook and they, so I didn't see anything. I said, your fly disappeared. Sometimes it's so subtle, but you just got to look for those rings and the faster world, like I said, the water flying upstream that that tells you there's one in that fast water. And that's where I like to concentrate my dry fly fishing.

D. Roger Maves: Okay, great. Alan Brisk in Western Jordan, Utah, he says “I'm contacting from Utah. However I'm seeking advice for fly fishing opportunities near Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania. My daughter and family recently moved there. I like to bring a fly rod along if there's a location that's close to fishing.”

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Do you know that valley?

Rick Nyles: Yeah, it's near Philadelphia.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: Within an hour to the Northeast up where I live up in the Redding area between Redding and Allentown, you have the Manatawny Creek, there's some wild brown trout streams. There's actually one Brook trout stream. Then up in the Allentown area, there's the Saucon, the Monocacy.

And if you go farther north there's the Pohopoco, which is a cold water release dam that water's 55 degrees here. Of course, the Lehigh river in Redding, the Tulpehocken Creek, Garnet valley, up here to the Redding area. You have two good streams up here. The Manatawny and the Tulpehocken.

D. Roger Maves: Which we're going to talk about some of those tonight. So, okay. A couple came in on the internet here. Let's knock these off first. “What would be a good river or stream?” This is from Gregory Nichols, “to look at the first week of October. And what species should we target will be passing through Pennsylvania, headed south from Niagara Falls,”

Rick Nyles: Heading south, go through the State College area and fish anywhere you like. And it'd be all be trout. The small creeks that are 10 feet wide, and it'd be mostly brook trout. Big Fishing Creek has brook trout and browns. Spring Creek has all brown trout. And then of course you have Penns Creek, which is we'll talk about later, but it's the premier stream. First week of October everything is going gangbusters again, think of the mighty ant, I always say the mighty ant, think of Isonychia, think about apple flaw caddis.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. Okay. Another one Scott in Poland, New York. He wants to know “What's the most effective way to fish a Green Drake, emerger floating it on top, like a Dunn, down and across the wet fly, dead drift in the film, like a nymph, upstream retrieve, et cetera?”

Rick Nyles: It all depends how you tie the pattern. I tie what I call a garbage fly, which is an emerger and it's an ugly fly. And I have a photograph of it and I just have that theory, that show 'em something different. If your flies in the store, what do you think they're seeing all the time? And that's an emerger for me.

And I like when it lays on its side, like it's struggling or it's a stillborn, something like that. So I'm a dead drifter. I like to, when I'm fishing the emergers, let 'em dead drift. You can give 'em a little. Little tug every once in a while. Maybe that'll trigger a hit because it's cuz you have that trailing shuck and you want to bring it out as far as an emerger. Sure. You can use a Green Drake, emerger on a wet fly, but it's not going to be your typical, emerger where the dunn is hatching. It's going to be a wet fly pattern. To me, if it's on top, he'll move it and time. If he wants to reach out to me, I'll send him a picture of my pattern.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. There you go.

Rick Nyles: That's it. I can't explain it.

D. Roger Maves: I know what you mean. I've caught fish in some pretty ugly hares ears over the years.

Rick Nyles: Yeah, because they can, the more they get beat up sometimes the more they fish like them.

D. Roger Maves: That's right.

Rick Nyles: To be honest up in Labrador, I had a fly like that. We were having some Green Drakes coming off and big Slate Drakes up there.

And this fly was, it lasted me three days catching these big brookies and it just seemed the uglier got the more hits I got.

D. Roger Maves: There you go. There you go. Let's take another quick break here, Rick. And when we come back, we'll start in on the fisheries there and we'll start out with Penns Creek, very famous fishery and start marching through some of these fisheries. Some people can get to know 'em hang tight and I'll be right back.

Rick Nyles: All right.

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D. Roger Maves: You're listening to Ask About Fly Fishing, internet radio. We're talking with Rick Nyles about Top Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Destinations.

If you'd like to ask him a question, just go to our homepage at askaboutflyfishing.com and send us your question using that form on our home page.

Okay. So we got a couple of things that came in. Let's knock these off first while we were doing that break, Tom Meyer in Wild Rose, Wisconsin. He says, please talk about your up. And I said down earlier, it's up DN? Yeah, trout wing. Do you say up down, is that the way?

Rick Nyles: Yeah. Up down trout and the real, if you think about what I did there up abbreviation down and trout, then it has the word out in it. So that's how I came up with the name. Cuz you can use the material down like caddis.

Up like a mayfly and out like a spinner and it's a synthetic and it comes in a puff and it has a little rubber ball. So if you've ever tied with CDC and you're trying to put it on and you drop the CDC, what do you have? Nothing. you drop this, you just pick it right back up. So one puff's good for a mayfly small caddis, half a puff, blue winged olives, half a puff, sulfurs, half a puff, anything 14 to 12. I use a full puff. There are videos on the website. If you just go to the store. Or go up in the menu bar, you can find where it says up down trout wing material, and you can go there and you can see videos and it's $7 on my website for a pack.

D. Roger Maves: Okay, great. Great. Another question, Chris Miller. He says, “Rick, I know that several streams in central PA have warmed up to 68 degrees in the past few weeks. When do you expect temperatures to be coming back down, especially on Penns and what is the temperatures of that is safe for the fish?”

Rick Nyles: It's always recommended 68 degrees. And under, as far as Penns goes, Ooh, I would have to say it's going to be September. We're supposed to hit a hundred degrees tomorrow and nineties next couple days. And no rain in sight. No thunderstorms. We don't get rain now, we just get thunderstorms. I would say Penns is going to be September.

We start getting those cooler nights, the water, I'm getting a little concerned about the water out there, the level and the, with this heat and the water warming up, those fish start stacking up at springs and things like that. In fact, the state has actually closed certain sections because the fish are all stacked up in there trying to survive, but they make it nature finds a way.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. All right. So let's dive into to some of these creeks and rivers in Pennsylvania, starting out with Penns Creek. What's special about the creek?

Rick Nyles: It begins in a cave. The water boils up in the cave, and then it flows out of the cave and it picks up tributary creeks, some nice size ones, Elk and Pine. And then it gets into a larger Creek. You can't cast across it's that wide, that diversity of it. So you have riffles, you have deep pools. You have deep runs.

You have a lot of shade you can get in the parts that have canopy water to shade cover, which is nice when you're in it's May fishing. The other, the best part about Penns is they have a regulated catch and release area and there's big fish there. So there's big fish throughout the whole system, but down in the catch and release, it's seven miles of fishing.

There's no fish being harvest down there and it's nothing to catch an 18. I've had clients catch 23 inch browns up there. I personally caught some bigger down there. My biggest one was almost 25 inches and I was stalking him for two years. I, he didn't move. He just stayed this one area. But the other nice thing is the, the state really thinks about what they're doing.

And in the upper section, they had a harvest area. What they did now, we were complaining, there was not enough big fish up in the upper section, above the catch and release area. They want people to harvest if they want to do that, they need to do that. So what they did was put in a slot limit and I think they can keep fish seven to 11 inches.

Now we're seeing bigger fish up there. The fish again, 12, 13, 14 inches are being allowed to get up to that 20 inch range.

D. Roger Maves: Nice.

Rick Nyles: Which is nice.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Nyles: And it has, I do a presentation at the Edison show and the Lancaster show here and it's Penns Creek - The Hatch Factory. And let me tell you, there's times you will be there. Don't open your mouth, cuz you'll get bugs in it. and it is just if you're at the right place at the right time. And that when I started going out there many years ago, we went out there mid-afternoon we didn't see a fish, we didn't catch a fish. Then the sulfurs came off and we were out. I was out in the water, maybe 10, 15 feet.

They were rising behind me. They were rising everywhere. You can't believe how many fish are in there. And Spring Creek is like that too. And we'll talk about that later.

D. Roger Maves: What other made hatches are on Penns Creek. Besides the sulfurs.

Rick Nyles: One of my favorite ones is the Hendrickson. That's the first big mayfly. Then you have the Grannoms come off at the same time. Then you move into the Quill Gordons, Ginger Quills, and lies like that. Then the March Browns, which is another one of my favorite hatches, it usually lasts about a month and it's not a real heavy hatch. And that's why I like it. It's very sporadic. So you got to target fish.

And that's what I like to do and teach my clients to do. We're going to hunt heads. We're going to look for that, upstream splashing those riffles, and we're going to get your fly over. And that's what I like to do. And that usually they'll be coming off sporadically from noon till dark, which is nice. The sulfur hatch is real intense and of course the green Drake. But the green Drake, the work could get out. Hey, it's on, it started on Penns Creek. So you go out there and you go to the wrong spot. It's either downstream yet or up above you.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: And by the way, get there around three o'clock and stake a claim.

D. Roger Maves: Three in the morning am?

Rick Nyles: Until it happens. So I stay away from there's other streams with green drake hatches, but

D. Roger Maves: Now can you float Penns Creek?

Rick Nyles: Yeah, you can. It's not bad. Yeah. If you have a rubber raft, you can float. But generally the guys who float it, they'll do it in the spring. Like in March.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: The Creek's open year round. So that's nice. Once the water starts dropping in May, it's tough. And I see they're

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: Asking about the, having problem saying it, but getting into the stream itself can be difficult. And pens is a very hard stream to wade. Anybody that's been there, that's on this call knows exactly what I'm saying. There's a lot of bowling ball type stones in there, so it,

D. Roger Maves: oh yeah.

Rick Nyles: It is hard in the catch and release area. You got to let's see cross, if you really want to fish. You got to cross the Creek and it's not a small Creek, it's more like a river and you got to cross it a couple times so you can fish it.

And, but there's real deep poles there. And I usually fall once a year in that Creek.

D. Roger Maves: I'm glad to hear that. That I'm not the only one that takes a dive once in a while.

Rick Nyles: Well, one of the things I started wearing wader pants, so I don't go too deep anymore and that's really helpful.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. Keeps you from, yeah,

Rick Nyles: I'd be on the edge too much.

D. Roger Maves: In New Mexico, the San Juan has what we call greased bowling balls in it, what you're describing. And yes, one night I was coming back and I couldn't see it was too dark. And I ended up floating for a while in my waders till I could get ground again. And it was scary. But, so I know what you mean by if you don't have tall waders you can't go in that you're mechanism.

Rick Nyles: And I've gotten wet though already, but not because an easier water, but there are some stretches that are okay, but to get to the better spot, I have a rule, if there's a trail I'm not going there. And one of the key things with Penns you look at the water and it's big and it can be intimidating and it, it will hand you your hat.

It will do. And it has done it to me. A couple times, fish are rising. You just can't figure out what they're doing, but there's hills, you got to go down, catch and release. I go to the one parking area and I'll take clients. I said, come on, we're going to hike two miles upstream and fish our way back, all day long.

And what I was going to say earlier was that. Don't pass up any nook or cranny, you'd be surprised. I always say, look at your home stream. How many here have a small home stream. Think about spots that you would not pass over in that stream, but you'll walk right by on Penns cuz it's big water.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: It's amazing. I was with one client. I said there's a really good spot up there. And here comes a gentleman downstream on the trail and we're out the middle fish in the bank side where he was, oh, he's going to jump in there. I said, Nope, he's going to walk right by it. He's not even going to think about fish in there. And there's a lot of undercut banks.

People are always thrown to the middle, and throw to those edges, those big Browns, like their cover.

D. Roger Maves: So is it mainly a brown trout fishery or rainbow fishery?

Rick Nyles: Yeah. Yeah. We got one big Brook trout out of there about 13 inches, 14 inches in all my years. I've gotten some rainbows, but I think they swam from the stock area, but it's a big brown trout fishery.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. Good. Penns Creek is in the State College area. Another one that you wanted to talk about was Spring Creek.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: So tell us about spring Creek.

Rick Nyles: Yeah, Spring is truly in the State College area. It gets fished a lot, has a very high population of fish and a lot of small ones, eight to 10, 11 inch fish.

Very good sulfur hatch, a really good sulfur hatch. It lasts a long time. It's really easy wading at 80% of the spots. It's a nice fishery. There's a lot at Spring Creek is pretty much once you get in you're in type fishery. So there's not much posted water at all. Then you have fly fishers paradise, and there you can't wade in that section there. It's an historical area, but Spring Creek, it's one of my favorite ones. Again, go where the trails are, but the sulfur hatch, you can sit in one spot and you. And it's not a deep Creek, knee deep is probably average depth maybe mid thigh, you can see bottom. And you [00:50:00] go, I can't believe all these fish where'd they come from it's.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: It's one of those type fisheries too. And it has such a high population, large parking areas and small ones along the creek. One car, two car, like I said, very little posted water's great fishery.

D. Roger Maves: Again. Is this rainbows or brookies or?

Rick Nyles: No, it's a brown. It's a brown,

D. Roger Maves: Brown too.

Rick Nyles: Trout fishery. Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Good and when fishing gets tough there, what do you do? What do you go to?

Rick Nyles: There? It's zebra midges, and press bugs. Yeah. Zebra midges and press bugs. There's a lot of grass in there, even though it's not really a soft, muddy bottom, like your typical Spring Creek. So it's gravelly and there's some rocks. No bigger than a computer.

It's an easy fishery. Good hatches. Blue winged olives are really good there. Sulfurs. They're the two primary in the Spring. They don't have the big hatches.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: They do that a little bit, but not much.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. What about another one in that area, Big Fishing Creek.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. That's where the farmhouse I lease is on. And that has, I caught my first wild tiger trout this year on the property.

I've caught some stock ones, but never a wild one, but it has browns and brooks in it, smaller fish. You can find big fish used to be the premier stream out there many years ago. The pressure has gone down, which is nice. It's one of those streams. You get into it and you just start working it and you can do a lot of dry fly searching there or drop a nymph.

If the bigger flies are coming off, it does have the Green Drake hatch. It's not real heavy, but it's there. If you can find Green Drakes, when they come off the fish don't eat'em you see 'em plugged down they don't eat. I don't know. Hey, I've been up into Delaware where it's been like carpeted, a green Drakes, and they're eating caddis I don't know.

D. Roger Maves: Go figure out,

Rick Nyles: But there that's another zebra midge type place, small flies as the season progresses, but the sulfur hatch is really good. The Hendrickson red Quill hatch is good. Like I said, it has the Green Drake, the Isonychia Slate, Drake it's okay, good caddis action. And in the summer size 18 to something small, I've really gotten into the smaller flies and the, and having more success personally.

D. Roger Maves: Now it looks like from the map I'm looking at this runs quite a few miles through from Mill Hall.

Rick Nyles: Yes.

D. Roger Maves: On down to, to what? Through Clintondale through Lamar and then further, how many miles is Bishop there? Would you say?

Rick Nyles: Oh my I'd say about 10, 10. It's probably 10 miles. Yeah. There's a regulated area. And then they have a section called the cabin area. So the cabin area is unique regulation. If the owners are visitors or whoever's in the cabin, if it's occupied, you're not allowed to fish there. You can walk through, but you can't fish. And then Sunday in the cabin stretch, there's no fishing at all. And it was to, it'd be nice to the landowners.

Could you imagine owning a cabin on a Creek? And you say to your brother-in-law, Hey, let's go fish at the cabin and cook some wood and you go there and there's two guys fishing in your backyard.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

Rick Nyles: So I think that's a good rule. And if that's what makes him happy to keep the access open, I think it's a real interesting rule, like these.

D. Roger Maves: All the ones we've been talking about, and I'm assuming probably most of the rest of them, it appears that roads run down and follow most of these streams and creeks and that's where you're getting access from. Yeah. So just.

Rick Nyles: Like Big Fishing there's pullovers everywhere.

D. Roger Maves: Everywhere.

Rick Nyles: Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. And would you say it's good fishing throughout that 10 miles?

Rick Nyles: Oh, yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Better than okay. Okay. All right. You also highlighted an area little. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really Nicetown area.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. And we run trips out there. Those package trips, those three night trips and two night trips. So there's a lodge we use out there, which you can see the river from. We call it a river, but it's more like the size of Penns Creek. There are some larger areas. Excellent fishery to me. It's as good as Penns easier to get around someone limited parking. You got to find spots and you got to do little hiking to get to some spots, but it's a good fishery.

D. Roger Maves: And is this what's the creek it's freestone, is it?

Rick Nyles: Yeah. freestone with it's like Penns freestone with big stones.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: And it will get, the rocks will get a little slippery as the season goes on and it'll fish to the end of June and then pick back up in September. So it might be a little warm for the month of July and August.

D. Roger Maves: What kind of fish? What kind of fish are

Rick Nyles: Brown trout? Brown trout

D. Roger Maves: Brown.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. And it has good hatches.

It has really good hatches. The sulfur hatch, the March brown, the blue winged olive. Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Sulfurs are sound highly prevalent in Pennsylvania general.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. They're everywhere they are.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: If there's trout in the water seems there's sulfurs there and. Again, you got to be creative with your patterns because people are buying a lot and they all look the same. And I think

D. Roger Maves: Any particular ones you can recommend, sulfur patterns you recommend

Rick Nyles: My up down is a different looking sulfur. I have heavy bios for tails. I help it float better in choppier water. And also, I like to exaggerate definition when I tie flies with colors or with like tails, I'll go a little bit heavier than what it is.

I really want to pronounce that this is a spinner with a split tail and I'll use some pretty thick deer hair to do that. Same with myself. I use a biopsy they're pretty big diameter wise and they, when I talk about different patterns, I show a slide when I'm talking at the shows and I have this blue wing olive up there, and I only use thread to do the body.

And then I have these real long tails on and people say, wow, those tails are long. And I said, yeah. And I'll pick up calipers and say, I've yet to seen a fish carry one of these yet. They're not measuring the tails. They just want to see that's. I think people get way too technical, but I tie a lot of flies. I'm doing mass production for the season than for me.

D. Roger Maves: Another different area that you mentioned was Cross Forks. Where is Cross Forks?

Rick Nyles: That's northwest of State College through Lockhaven.

D. Roger Maves: Okay.

Rick Nyles: There's Kettle Creek up there, which is a really nice history that has a lot of good hatches. And we'll go up there.

The nice thing about State College, like the Juniata is about an hour. From my farm house. It's about an hour and 20 minutes to get down there. But within an hour circle of State College, you can, oh, there's so many streams that you can fish from. Small Brooky trout, streams, and parks. You just drive around in the game, lands, hunting lands.

Hey, there's a small creek. Let's go fish. It there's brook trout in it. But up there, the Kettle Creek is a larger stream up there. And it's a really nice stream.

D. Roger Maves: What kind of fish does it hold?

Rick Nyles: Oh, that's brown trout and stock rainbows. Wild brown, there's wild brookies there too. Native brookies and wild browns. Yeah.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. Is there, are there any wild rainbows in Pennsylvania? Are they just all stopped?

Rick Nyles: No, they're there are up in the Delaware system and I've found some here locally. I've caught some here locally. So they'll, I think if we get a couple good years of certain, type of waters or temperatures and higher water.

You're going to see 'em I think once it gets down to like now with a hundred degrees tomorrow, I think they have a tough time. Cause they like to be the riffles and the oxygen and it gets too warm there for 'em.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. I was, I've been reading one of, I don't know if he's Steve Ramirez, he's a writer and he's written two books just publishing his third book, but he fishes a lot down in Texas in the hill country down there.

And in his books, he was he's talking about how they stock the rainbow's down there and knowing that at the end of the season, they won't survive because water just gets too warm and they can't, they can't to make it through the year. And, but he says, I still release them. I let 'em swim for as long as they can. And then

Rick Nyles: The state here does the same they'll stock fish and creeks say, no, they're not going to make it, but it's good for the kids.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: And people who want to harvest, they encourage that.

D. Roger Maves: That's all part of it. Most of us learn that way.

Rick Nyles: Yes.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. You had a whole bunch of creeks and rivers in Eastern Pennsylvania. Tulpehocken.

Rick Nyles: Tulpehocken another native American. Yeah. Tulpehocken. And then Manatawny Creek is another end of Popopoco. And so anyway, the Tulpehocken, I mentioned it earlier. Delayed harvest. And it's a, a release from a dam and it used to be one of the top fisheries in this part of the state. But what happened is that we're not getting cold enough water out of the dam during the summer.

Cause you could fish a year round and what's happened is that. Siltation has pushed up the water columns right now it's releasing 72 degree water where 20 years ago it was releasing 64 or 62, but it's still good fishery. It's part of the Keystone program. And the Keystone program is there's a group of streams.

What they do is they put some big boys in there, some 18 to 20 inch Browns and rainbows. So it's always nice to go there. You never know, and it actually has some carpies you can go fish for. And then the Manatawny Creek is that's my local stream. That's where I really cut my teeth on. And that's a brown trout fishery but they do stock it.

And, but there's five streams that form it. And two are class A what I mean by class A, in Pennsylvania, you have exceptional value. And then the next level down is class A. And then next level down is that it's a trout stream that has a high designation to it because of the, how good the water is, how good the bug lights is.

And the Manatawny Creek has the highest, the best hatches in the area down here and has everything basically except the green drake and then there's several streams in the Allentown area. Little Lehigh right now I looked this morning. I was just looking around at temperatures cuz of the heat wave and that's running 64 degrees.

So that's fishable right now. That's Spring Creeks and, and Spring fed the soften. Doesn't have a temperature on it, but that's in the Allentown, Bethlehem Easton area. And, and the Monocacy is up that way. And that has special regulations. They're all brown trout fisheries. You have to understand. Pennsylvania is a brown trout fishery, native Brook trout.

That the bigger waters is Browns and then the small waters are brookies. And then the Lackawanna to river, that is a river up in the Scranton area. And it's designated as a class A and it's a river. And so there's 17 miles of fishing up there. It's one of those rivers where once you get in, you can fish, but you might be fishing in downtown Scranton.

You might hook a shopping cart. So you never know what you're

D. Roger Maves: I hear plan to learn more about that river. I've got an upcoming interview with Charles Charleston.

Rick Nyles: Oh yeah. I know Charles.

D. Roger Maves: I think he had a lot to do with revitalizing that river. So anxious to talk to him about that. Cuz I guess it was in pretty bad shape at one point a time.

Rick Nyles: But if, yeah, it was the coal regions up that way. We didn't treat the land too well as recovered. It's a great fishery. There's a lot of big fishing there because it's big water and again, don't walk by stretches. You would fish in your home stream. I like to fish outside the city area. Of course.

D. Roger Maves: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. There's I know in downtown Denver here, there's some pretty darn good carp fishing and you're looking up at high rises, but not good trout fishing.

Rick Nyles: yeah,

D. Roger Maves: but in some places, there, there is good fishing in inner city, so to speak.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. The Monocacy is just like this sock and 20 feet wide, 30 feet wide springish type Creek with small rocks.

And you won't see huge fish in there every once in a while. You'll get one, but generally speaking, they're nine to 13, 14 inches in that [01:04:00] range, brown trout. And then I see there's a question here about the Lehigh. So the Lehigh is an interesting story. It's a drift boat river. They do a lot of rafting there, recreational rafting and commercial.

They run trips there. So they do releases to help the rafters. And then they do releases to keep the water chilled from two different dams. It's has the, there's an association that works with the Army Corps to come up with a release plan every year. And then there's a stocking association and it does have big fish, but sometimes the people get confused between the stock brown and the wild brown.

They think the stock Brown's wild, but cuz they, the stocking association puts in some beautiful brown trout in there and rainbows, but there is a good wild brown trout fishery. Very hard to Wade in my opinion. I Wade fished it, maybe 10 times in my life and drifted it 30 or 40 times the best way to fish. It is a drift boat and there's some good cold water coming in there.

The one stream is the Po poco and that's a cold water release dam. I mentioned that earlier, we guide a lot on that, cuz it's a, it's an easy Wade fishery and it has good hatches too. I wouldn't drive by to Lehigh to answer your question, Jason, give it a try.

And we do drift boat trips down there. Best time is of course in the spring and then in the fall right now, if it's unfishable.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. How do you tell the difference between a stocked brown and a wild brown?

Rick Nyles: That's a difficult question is depending stocked Browns usually have dots that. Touch each other, or look like a figure eight and they're [01:06:00] silvery now, that's your general stock fish. But a brown trout, like raised in a good spring pond fed good food will look just like a wild one.

D. Roger Maves: So it's hard to tell. Yeah.

Rick Nyles: Yeah. It's hard to tell it used to be, oh, it has a blue dot and it has a red tip. Well, stock fish have that now, too, if they're fed, correct?

D. Roger Maves: Yeah.

Rick Nyles: It's about to habitat. A lot of the food is made from the salmon that run out of the great lakes to give them protein.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. We're running out of time here. In fact, we've run out of time. Any closing thoughts, Rick, on people that have maybe never fished Pennsylvania. We've given them a lot to look forward to tonight. I think any closing thoughts on fishing, Pennsylvania,

Rick Nyles: I would pick up one of the books. If you have interest in fishing here, the other thing you could do is get on my newsletter. You'll hear about trips. We do the package trips. And one thing you have to remember, I do draw people from around the country. I had people here from as far as Colorado come in last two years, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Virginia. Connecticut.

So I do draw a lot of people in the state draws in a lot of people cuz they want to fish it. They hear about it and read about it on the internet. So I

D. Roger Maves: Right.

Rick Nyles: Put it on your bucket list and that's

D. Roger Maves: Right.

Rick Nyles: It's not as expensive as going to a Montana or Labrador, places like that. It's not that expensive here.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Yeah. It's I've never fished there. It certainly has gotten my interest. I'm thinking about calling my buddy and saying you want to go do a road trip and cause it just seems like there's so much fishing there. You turn your back on one stream and you're facing another one. It seems like I know it's quite like that, but it's it seems so.

Anyway. Yeah. Great stick with me. We're going to give away a few prizes. Rick. We're going to give away one year membership, Fly Fishers International, one year subscription of Fly Fishing and Tying Journal. And we'll be giving way a book courtesy of Stackpole books, hang tight with me and just that.

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Just a quick reminder to everyone. Before you leave our website tonight, please take a minute and give us your feedback about the show can find the link on our homepage and the section under tonight show. This is what did you think of this show? Just click on the link and leave your comments. We'd really appreciate it.

Now it's time to give away our prizes. Winners for our drawings are randomly selected from the show's registration database. If you didn't register for tonight, show it's too late now, but make sure you do so for our next show. You don't want to miss out on your chance, at some of the great prizes that we have to offer.

If you are the lucky winner, we'll contact you after the show and provide you with information on how to receive your prize. So first up is so we'll give away a one year membership to Fly Fisher's International and to learn more about FFI go to flyfishersinternational.org, flyfishersinternational.org.

And let me fire up my database here and looks like Greg Nichols in Alabama, Greg Nichols in Alabama. So congratulations, Greg. In winning that one year membership to Fly Fisher's International. [01:10:00] If you didn't win tonight, go check 'em out. Join yourself. It's a great organization to support our next prize that we're going to give away is the one year subscription of Fly Fishing and Tying Journal, which is courtesy of amatobooks.com.

Another publisher that publishes great books and periodicals on fly fishing. So check them out and looks like our winner for that is David Piet, David Piet in Texas. So congratulations, David. And congratulations on both to you gentlemen, and hope you enjoy your prizes. And now we'll give away a book courtesy of Stackpole books.

So I have a list of books to give away from Stackpole, and if you're the winner tonight, I'll send you the list and you can pick one of the books from that list, if you are the winner. So the way we play this is that you type in your answer, your name and your location and the form on our homepage. It's the same form we use to ask questions during the show.

First person that gets the correct answer wins. The question is, even though the fish may not like to eat those green Drakes, you may want to fish for the, with those green Drakes. What holiday of the year is the green Drake hatch centered around in Pennsylvania? What holiday?

So I hope that's. I was right at the beginning of the interview there, Rick. So I don't, we'll see if anybody made note of that. And it takes a minute, cuz there is a slight delay before they even hear me. So let me see if we can get somebody to answer if somebody knows. So

I'm refreshing my que here and

It looks like we might have a winner. Carl Palmer in Rochester, New York says Memorial day. Is he right Rick?

Rick Nyles: Yes, he is.

D. Roger Maves: Okay. There we go. So now we got more of him coming in. Couple other top. Uh, Tom, Bob. Yeah. A bunch of people coming in right behind, but Carl was the fastest. So congratulations Carl.

Hey, Carl, just send me your mailing address, your shipping address in the same form. I've got your name, your email address. Just send me your shipping address using that same form. And then we'll get that book shipped out to you. Congratulations on that. Thanks for paying attention. Hope to learn something. Hope everybody learned something tonight. Cuz I did. And Rick, I really appreciate you being on the show, taking your time out.

I know it's still, it's even more past your bedtime than when we started such you, you hung in there, buddy. You hung in there. so thanks so much for being with us.

Rick Nyles: Alrighty. Thanks for having me

D. Roger Maves: Have a good night sleep.

Rick Nyles: All right.

D. Roger Maves: Yeah. Hopefully I all found the podcast archive on our website. If you haven't just look around for the link on the top line of our menu and the archive you'll find overpass shows over 360 shows, which you can search by keyword or keyword phrase like trout, Tarpon, Madison river, Pennsylvania, whatever you go ahead and explore. And I'm sure you'll find some great shows to, to listen to that you'll really enjoy.

Our next broadcast may on August 17th, 7:00 PM. Mountain 9:00 PM Eastern time. And on that show I'll interview Christy McReynolds and our topic for the show will be Fly Fishing for Monster Browns on Streamers. Christy knows how to hook up with monster brown trout on the fly.

She's a lifelong angler and has developed her skills on the South Holston and Watauga or Watauga I remember is in east Tennessee, where she and her husband, Jason run their guide service, Flying Soho. Join us and learn their secrets to finding hooking up and landing these fish of a lifetime. Be sure to add this upcoming show to your calendar.

Just click on, add the calendar button just below Christy's photo on their home page. And you'll be all set. We'd also like to thank Fly Fisher's International, Amato Books, Lees Ferry Anglers, Enrico Puglisi flies, and Global Rescue for sponsoring our show tonight, don't forget to visit our website at askaboutflyfishing.com and make sure you're signed up to receive our announcements. So you don't miss out on any of our future broadcasts.

Thanks for listening to Ask About Fly Fishing internet radio. We hope you enjoyed the show. That's it. Good night, everyone and good fishing.

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