Season’s First Snow And Rainbows On Brodhead Creek

A year ago, in one of my YouTube videos, I asked subscribers to comment on bodies of water in Pennsylvania that they’d like to see me fly fish. One body of water that was mentioned several times was the Brodhead Creek, which is located in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. The Brodhead isn’t far from the Poconos and is a 22-mile long creek that splits Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg before dumping into the Delaware River. Last week I decided I’d finally fly fish the Brodhead. I had plenty of time to research the stream and found out that it has an interesting background. One of the more interesting points is that some fly fishermen regard the Brodhead as the birthplace of modern fly fishing. Apparently there were quite a few well known authors and even Presidents of the United States that once wet a fly line on the Brodhead. Once the Catskills gained a good reputation, they supposedly went north.

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Dodging Harvey To Find The Chittenango

Late last Friday night I made a last minute decision to head north and cross another New York trout stream off of my “streams I want to fish” list. I decided on New York because it was Labor Day weekend and the remnants of Tropical Storm Harvey were racing towards southeastern Pennsylvania. I knew Saturday was going to be gray skies and a rain jacket at home. In New York it would be sunny skies and a t-shirt. The stream I targeted was the Chittenango Creek, located in Madison County, just south of Oneida Lake. I learned about this body of water back in May when I was fly fishing Ninemile Creek. The Chittenango was rumored to have a healthy population of wild and stocked brown trout and I’d been wanting to get there for weeks. 

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The Lady, Elk River And West Virginia Mountains

Will someone please stop these thunderstorms on the weekend! It seems as if this summer is shaping up to be one of the wettest on record, but actually, it is not. In fact, this summer doesn’t even rank in one of the top ten wettest summers in the past thirty years. Perhaps it’s just that the rain keeps making an appearance on Saturdays and Sundays. This past week I was disappointed to find just that, a weekend with another high percentage chance of thunderstorms in Pennsylvania. I decided I was going to take a road trip and find better weather. I also decided that this would be the weekend I’d ask my girlfriend to be a part of my fly fishing adventures. Some guys might read that and say I’m crazy, but I’ve always wanted to share all the amazing places I go with someone.

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The Brown Trout Buffet On Ninemile Creek

Heading into Memorial Day weekend I had my sites set on traveling across the border into Canada to fly fish the Grand River. I had all my planning done and was ready to roll and then Friday afternoon I called Grand River Outfitting & Fly Shop. I found out that water levels on the Grand River had been raised due to high water in the reservoir and in five minutes my weekend plans had to change. Fortunately I had a Plan B ready to put into action. Plan B consisted to heading to New York to fish Ninemile Creek, just east of Syracuse. Ninemile Creek is a 22-mile tailwater that begins at the Otisco Lake and runs east to the Onondaga Lake. Within these 22 miles of water, there are approximately 5 miles of accessible water with Public Fishing Rights (“PFR’s”). The stream intrigued me because it has a wild population of brown and brook trout, but is also heavily stocked by the Carpenter Brook Fish Hatchery. This hatchery puts a lot of fish in the river. I’ve read numbers from 18,000, all the way up to 24,000 annually. I figured if I headed here there was a good chance I could get into some fish.

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