We’ve spent the better portion of the week on the Lehigh River as part of our guide school. Water conditions have been all over the place in the past two weeks and we started out saturday from the new ramp at Bowmanstown and floated down to Walnutport. Fishing was slow with the water high, cold, and off color. Still we managed a few browns on streamers including a nice 18″ brown that inhaled a Fuschia TS ESL, in all of the excitement of the day we left our cameras at home so no pics.

Sundays float was from Glen Onoko to Bowmanstown, the weather was nice, the water was clearing and dropping a bit, and the fishing was nonexistent. The upper part of the river can be a little tougher to fish when the water is high and cold in the early season when you’re drifting, it’s more productive when you stop and work slower, deeper water over very thoroughly and since drift boat handling was our main focus today we did not have much time for this type of fishing.

Monday was another Bowmanstown to Walnutport float. The water was better than over the weekend and we had lots of fast and hard strikes in the Bowmanstown area, no doubt from the beautiful rainbows that the LRSA have stocked recently. Nymph fishing was not very productive again and streamer fishing produced most of the action. Blue Quills, Hendricksons, and Grannom Caddis were hatching in good numbers, no rises were seen.

After two days on other rivers we returned to the Lehigh and floated from Bowmanstown to Walnutport. The flow was much more angler friendly though water temp was 42˚ when we dumped the boats in. Still a little off color but overall not too bad. We had some strikes early on and a few fish landed around lunch time on buggers. The afternoon was slow but persistence paid off and Tim landed this awesome 23″ Brown while dredging with a White Chain Reaction Leech. Hendricksons and lots of Grannoms and Stoneflies were once again present.