trout fishing on the bushkill river in pennsylvania's pocono mountains by colin kearns

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

The bite slowed down considerably after our late lunch. (Or perhaps we slowed down - McDonald's will do that to an angler.) And around 5 p.m. we decided to call it a day - after one more cast, that is. Funny thing happened though: That one last cast turned into 50 last casts, and the later we stayed, more fish began rising. "This is trouble," Cermele said. "The longer we stick around, it's only going to get better and harder to leave. We could wind up staying 'til 11." It was approaching 6 p.m., and we'd been up since 4 a.m. What's more, between the two of us we had to have caught close to 100 fish. We just didn't have it in us. We looked across the river - tempted by the rings from risers before us - made one last cast, then broke down our rods.

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

We maybe scored one 'bow for every 10 browies, and the majority, I'm not ashamed to say, were caught by Cermele. This rainbow hung around just long enough after its release for Cermele to snap a stellar shot.

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

But retying pays off. Yeah, I lost plenty of bugs and went through a brand-new leader and used up all of my 5x tippet. But there were a lot trout in this river, and I duped my fair share.

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

For the better part of the morning, Cermele and I fished according to the old angling adage, never leave fish to find fish. Cast after cast was met with strike after strike. We caught them on top with elk hair caddis, PMDs, spinners, and Adams. We also slammed fish below the surface with tandem nymph rigs, which most often consisted of a pheasant tail behind a flashback hare's ear. More than once we doubled up. Here a feisty brown trout wants absolutely nothing to do with Cermele.

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

Earlier in the day, Cermele told me a story about a conversation he had with a Montana guide last year. The guide told him that oftentimes when eastern trout anglers travel out West, they expect to encounter challenging fishing only to find that the big rivers in the Rockies aren't as tough or technical as their home waters back East. The fishing is easy for them. "And when western anglers visit the East, they think they've got it all figured out," Cermele said, paraphrasing the guide. "But once they actually get here, they see how tight and technical these waters are, and they really struggle." After about 12 hours on the Bushkill it was a lesson to which I could relate. But that struggle made the fish I caught all the more worthwhile. If you want find out how many trout F&S Deputy Editor Jay Cassell nailed on a different Pocono stream, Mud Run, click here

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

Here's a look inside one of Cermele's fly boxes. We both had plenty of patterns to choose from, but honestly a box full of pheasant tails, flashback hare's ears, Adams, and elk hair caddis, all in various sizes, probably would've been enough. However, one pattern that I brought with me from Montana worked well on the Bushkill: it's a pheasant tail emerger that I tie. It looks and is tied just like a pheasant tail except instead of peacock herl in the thorax I use yellow rabbit dubbing, and for the wingcase I use a small strip of gray foam, which is enough to keep it afloat just below the surface. I always fish this pattern behind a buoyant dry fly, such as an elk hair caddis, and I've found that it's especially deadly at the end of a long drift.

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

The Bushkill rainbows might not have had the rich and prominent pink stripes like the ones I caught in Montana, but I've never seen a rainbow that I didn't like. Besides, these fish had other qualities - like the ability to put up a strong and stubborn fight.

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

The Bushkill is perfect for the light-tackle fly angler. I fished a 5-weight, which was a bit too much for these fish, although it was nice to have later on the day when I was sight-casting dry flies to risers 30 feet away. Cermele fished a 4-weight outfit, shown here, and says it's the ideal rig for the river.

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

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fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:00:00 -0400

But Cermele won the fight. This fish is a bit bigger than the average 12- to 14-incher. But while these trout aren't huge, they can certainly fight and are strong enough to put a mean bend in a rod.