Temp was about 70˚ at the Waterworks. Insect activity was very sparse. Lots of small fish boiling the water above the gauge block. A few fish were rising below and there were a few tricos in the air and a caddis would hatch about every ten fifteen minutes. Managed to land a few in trico spinners and had a few looks with a foam beetle but no takers. Today was a bust for bugs! Broke off a brute right iin front of the deadfall and lost another nice fish in that area.

Fished a couple of my proven spots in the Gorge last evening. I(Paul K) was quite surprised as the water temp on my thermometer was 64 degrees. Rode my bike upstream from Rockport and the first thing that I noticed was how much water was flowing over the waterfall upstream from the parking lot. Normally at this time of year it is only a trickle. Also noticed other locations where I could hear water rushing down the walls of the Gorge.

Parked my bike and walked down to the first pool that I intended to fish. While putting my rod together and getting rigged up I saw three different fish rise. There was a fair amount of small dark colored mayflies and also some small yellow stoneflies. Caught 2 rainbows about 12 inches at my first stop (both jumped out of the water several times), lost one other trout, and had two other fish eat my fly that I missed. Both rainbows splashed water on me when I released them; seemed to be in excellent condition.

Went to another spot and saw 3-4 fish rising. Caught one 18 inch brown that had perfect huge fins and was in excellent shape. All trout were caught on a size 12 march brown parachute with yellow post.

Also saw one black bear walking up the RR tracks on the east side of the river and two beavers that were working on their house that was built into the bank on river left.

I thought that the water level and the temps and overall conditions were excellent for this time of year; best I have seen in the five years that I have been regularly fishing this section of the river. I saw on the LRSA page that temps were as low as 65 degrees at Jim Thorpe on Monday 8/24/09. I can only imagine how cold the temps would be in the Gorge if we had the tower modifications at FEW.

I floated from Bowmanstown to Walnutport with my brother tonight. Water temp was 71˚. Our target tonight was smallies but the river was quiet tonight. Slate Drakes and Cahills hatched intermittently and a few trout were rising. My borther had some luck fishing a Chompers on a spinning rod but all in all there wasn’t much going on. Near Walnutport we saw a few trout rising to Sulphurs and figured I’d try to latch onto one to see what kind of shape they were in but the bats were so thick, absolutely crazy amount of bats, that it was too hard to cast and I was nailing bats with my rod left and right so we decided to cut the mosquitoes off and head for home. Reports from other anglers on the river were that the fishing was slow.

We hit the Susquehanna River for the second time in as many weeks and were pleased once again, the numbers maybe a little lower than they were years ago but there are plenty of fish and the average fish is BIG. The target area was Duncannon to Fort Hunter and though the fly fishing was very tough, hardware turned up lots of big fish. High water conditions have persisted on the Susky and we lost more hogs than we landed but still it’s exciting to see healthy smallies in the river once again. Fish are spread out all over the river but we worked hard for them and everybody left with some tennis elbow from the sheer number of long casts to try to cover as much water as possible. We would advise anglers to take some hardware with when heading to the Susquehanna at this time as it turned up fish at a much higher rate. Some White Flies were spotted but very little surface activity. Chain Reaction Leeches, Sculpins, Hellgrammites, and crayfish patterns will produce on the fly rod, bring a heavy sink tip. Tubes were hot on the spin rods.

Paul and I(Tim) hit the Lehigh tonight from Bowmanstown to Walnutport. Water is up a bit and mid 60s the whole way to Walnutport which is AWESOME for August!!! It’s a shame that the Army Corps doesn’t release colder water out of Beltzville in the summer when it’s apparent that they have it, it doesn’t make sense - why do they release 58˚ water in July and August when they have 52˚ water? Anyway the current jolt of cold water is doing the fish good. We fished dries the whole time and while we didn’t see a fish for about two miles we ended up boating about a dozen fish, all looked very healthy and show no apparent signs of stress. It will be interesting to see what the PFBC electroshocking turns up here in the next few days. At any rate we’re anticipating good fall fishing as it doesn’t look like fish are migrating much this year. A few Slate Drakes(ISOs), Big BWOs, Cahills, and Sulphurs hatched here and there and there was a fair bunch of caddis from unfishable microscopic to #10s.

The river is a bit high but we hit it up today to see how the river is shaping up this year. Due to water levels the fly fishing was tough with no surface activity. Most fish were caught with hardware and tubes. The fish are all over the river and you can expect to make a lot of casts to turn up good numbers of fish which was difficult with fly tackle at current flows. Any large streamer patterns in either dark or flourescent colors will work, Chain Reaction Leeches on a sink tip are as good as it gets. Action was fast and furious at times and should improve as the water drops.