What a beautiful day for a Lehigh River float trip. Smallmouth bass were the target species and they did not disappoint. The catching started early, like while we were trying to get the boats rigged up, and continued steadily throughout the day. Randy latched onto a real bruiser smallmouth in a Class 2+ rapid and was able to land and release it without any damage to the fish but we couldn’t take a photo, my hands were kind of full at the moment. Chartreuse, Black, Purple, And Pink produced pretty evenly start to finish. The fish weren’t really on top at all but they did hit subsurface all day. Now’s the time for the cheap sales pitch, if you can cast them stop by and grab some Chain Reaction Leeches from us. They’re big, and require some muscle to cast but they work and they work well. There are a lot of sore mouthed smallies in the Lehigh and Delaware right now that would agree if only they could talk.

Clarks Creek was it’s usual self today, challenging but very productive. I had Dave from Massachusets and the fishing was great with a number of nice fish landed. Small CDC Caddis and various terrestrials along with a few special guide flies brought 15-20 trout to net/hand today with only a few hours of fishing time. Today was the first time I ever saw a rainbow caught in Clarks Creek. I don’t know yet if this marks a change in stocking policy at Clarks Creek or not. The fish were becoming more active to floating inchworms last week but wouldn’t touch them today. Small Parachute Adams, or my special Parachute Oscar, also produced pretty well. We stopped taking pictures shortly after we started because I only had a few slots left on my memory card. Cicadas could be heard throughout the day but none were seen near the water and the fish didn’t pay too much attention to their imitations. I also managed to use the nifty underwater function to take a picture of a nice brookie as it was released.

While doing some drift boat training today we combined some smallmouth fishing. The middle section of the Lehigh is actually fishing pretty well for smallies. The hot ticket was streamers in Hot Pink, Chartreuse, Black, and White. No one color was consistent from start to finish so if you’re planning to fish the Lehigh for smallmouth bass and your not having any luck with one color consider switching to change your luck. Our Chain Reaction Leech continues to prove itself as a productive for warmwater fish as it is for big trout and the anadromous fish of Alaska and the Great Lakes. I had a muskellunge of at least 40″ chomp on it at one point but he just didn’t grab it right, then within 300yds a golden rainbow trout of about 18″ do the same. No good hook up on either fish but it gets the blood pumping. We forgot to get some smallmouth shots but we did grab a few photos of newely hatched golden stoneflies.

After mowing my grandfather’s yard in Bernville tonight I decided to hit the Tully. I drove down to the Water Works at 5:30pm where the was one other person, a nice older gent who informed me that the fish were not as active as they had been a few hours before. Within ten minutes the fish became active eating small caddis and I managed to land a decent bow with a #16 CDC Caddis in Tully Green. I had a few other fish on throughout the night but they either came unbuttoned or broke off, I guess that’s what happens when you switch from a week straight of pounding smallies with a stiff 7wt down to 7x tippet on a 3wt. The fish are still active and appear to be healthy despite high water temps, it was 72˚ this evening, and yes that was the water temp.