Prospecting New Waters

After fishing the upper Lehigh Gorge solely upriver from the Rockport area, I (Paul K.) decided it was time to check out some new territory.   Once again I parked at Rockport, but this time I headed down river in search of rising fish.   Many excellent looking pools were easily spotted directly from the bike trail and several times I parked my bike and climbed down to the river to take a look.   A few smallish rising fish were spotted and although I was sure that many of these pools held larger fish that were waiting for lower light levels to show themselves, I was set on a larger corner pool that I had seen via Google Earth.   When I arrived at my destination, I was shocked at the extremely low water conditions, but happy to see rising fish.  Five brook trout (each approx 10-11″) and seven brown trout (14-20+”) came to the net from 6:30 to 9PM.  These fish were all caught in an area of the river that is approx 6 miles downstream from Sandy Run (the limit of the PFBC stocking) and approx. 6 miles upstream from Bear Creek (the upstream limit of the 5 Mile Club stocking).   At least 3 of the brown trout were 20″ in length and seemed to be in fine shape even though the water temps have been approaching the 70F mark.   Hopefully next week we will see some much needed rain across the entire watershed as the tributaries are very low.  Without rain or cooler temps, this will most likely be me last report for a while as I would not want to risk the health of any of these wild or holdover fish.