Transcript: Central Pennsylvania Fishing Report with TCO Fly Shop State College
S5, Ep 145: Central Pennsylvania Fishing Report with TCO Fly Shop
2023, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
http://www.thearticulatefly.com
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly, and we're back with another Central PA Fishing Report with George Costa of TCO Fly Shop in State College. How you doing, George?
George:
[0:14] I am amazing as always, Marvin. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:16] And as always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble and took a look at your weather, and you definitely have that cruddy late fall, early winter weather in Central PA.
George:
[0:27] It's perfect. It's perfect fishing weather is what I like to say.
So yeah, we got a little bit of rain the next couple of days, maybe some more a little later next week.
Weekend looks like it's going to be all right. So yeah, it's gray, it's cloudy, it's drizzly, it's cold.
So it is that perfect Pennsylvania fishing weather.
As far as on the water, I mean, the stream levels have all been pretty good right now. We're at seasonal averages, maybe a touch above, which is nice.
Fish are still spawning. There's plenty of fish still on reds.
That should be wrapping up in the next couple of weeks.
Spring Creek fish tend to spawn a little later than most of the other streams.
So you'll probably still spot a fish on reds here and there on some of the other streams.
And just remember, even though they're not spawning, still watch out for those reds.
You know, you don't want to step on the eggs and crush the little baby, baby, baby fish. So watch out for them.
And other than that, the fishing's been pretty good. The streamer bites have been good this past week.
Guys have been getting plenty of fish chasing and moving for that. nymphing has been good.
Dry fly activity has been kind of blase with occasional olives here and there and maybe some midges if you want to, if you got the time and the patience to do that.
You can muster some fish up. Other than that we're, you know, pretty good late fall, you know, getting into winter kind of shape here.
Marvin:
[1:42] Yeah, and I would imagine the rains probably helped the steelhead bite up on the alley too, right?
George:
[1:47] That is the word on the street. We were just talking about that a few minutes ago and a little bit of rain, it might be too much who knows we got to wait and see what's happening out there but steel heading has been pretty good they definitely need water up there in the eerie trips and there's a lot of fish in so I mean steel heading has been pretty good now it's the perfect time since everybody's deer hunting the next week or so so get out there and catch a couple steelhead now while you got the river to yourself.
Marvin:
[2:14] There you go and so what's the over-under on the first big pile of gray snow in front of the store?
George:
[2:19] Oh, please don't, don't, don't jinx me like that, please. It could be tomorrow.
It could be a week, but I don't know. Maybe middle of the month is my guess.
Maybe another two or three weeks. We'll probably see the nice gray snow out here.
Marvin:
[2:32] Yeah. And I assume you've been doing lots of crunches to get ready to shovel. Right?
George:
[2:36] No, no, I'm too old for that. I got the younger guys to do that.
Marvin:
[2:41] Makes the coffee and the Yeti taste all the better.
George:
[2:43] Right? Exactly. I just watch go shovel the snow kid.
Marvin:
[2:49] So, I've got a question for you from Brenner and he wanted to get your thoughts on kind of how to effectively fish the double dry rig, fly selection and all that kind of good stuff.
George:
[2:59] Cool. Good question. So, double dry, I generally, only time I really focus on doing something like that is, I like doing that a lot, if there's a really small hatch going on, let's say a small trichos Those are small, small olives or a little midge, and it's really kind of hard to track that fly.
I'll often drop something bigger in front of it, like an elk ear caddis is probably the perfect fly to drop in front of a two fly rig.
Something bigger, bushier that you can track up front, and then off the bend of that I generally will drop down a tippet size or so.
So I'll run like a, let's say a nine foot, five X leader.
I'll drop a size 14 elk ear caddis on that. Off the bend of that, I might go down to six, maybe even 7X if I'm fishing really small.
And I don't go too long with that leader, maybe 15, 18 inches is probably more than enough.
And then I would fish it as if I was fishing a dry dropper rig, like with a nymph on the back.
You want to try to get those flies to kind of come back towards you so you don't get a lot of drag on that second fly.
Controlling the drag on a two fly rig like that is a little tricky, but just use your mending and cast upstream and have the fly drift back, you can usually get a good drag-free drift and makes life a lot easier so you can track your smaller fly.
You've got that visual spot from the bigger caddis. So that's generally how I like to do it.
Marvin:
[4:20] Do you like loop knots on your flies to kind of make it a little bit easier to get a better drift or do you not bother with that?
George:
[4:26] Um, I generally don't mess around with that too much.
Um, I know a lot of people do prefer that I kind of like a straight connection, Um, but um, you can you know loop knot if that's something you prefer I'm sure there's you know could be a little bit of an advantage to that in certain situations for sure Yeah, well, there you go.
Marvin:
[4:43] And you know folks we love questions at the articulate fly You can email them to us.
You can dm us on social media Whatever is easiest for you and if we use your question I will send you some articulate fly swag And we're going to interview a drawing for something cool from the shop, which we'll do in the first fishing report of 2024.
And George, before I let you go, I'm sure you've got all kinds of sales, classes, trips and all kinds of cool stuff you want to let folks know about.
George:
[5:06] Yeah, for sure. I mean, we just are publishing now our classes for the 2024 season, beginners classes, specialty classes.
You know, start thinking about booking those guide trips for next spring since we do fill up pretty soon. And so starting in the next couple of weeks, we'll be booking for the 24 season.
Sales, we've got a bunch of good stuff in the shop. You know, some Sims, Orvis, bunch of good stuff you can check out on the web, pcoplibishing.com.
And a couple of good winter events coming up. We have our wintertime brewing bugs end of January.
And just check out our website. You can get a link to all these things that we're doing here.
And hope to see you guys soon in the shop.
Marvin:
[5:42] Yeah, and you know, do you have enough Blackberry brandy or do people need to bring that to you while they do their holiday shopping?
George:
[5:49] I could always, I'll always have more Blackberry Brandy. Always more.
Marvin:
[5:53] And if folks can't find Blackberry Brandy, what's choice number two?
George:
[5:58] Whiskey will do just fine, thank you.
Marvin:
[6:00] Yeah, well, we'll stop there. We won't talk about scotch, sipping whiskey or Irish whiskey. We'll just stop there.
Maybe you're an equal opportunity whiskey drinker.
George:
[6:10] I'll drink whatever anybody wants to give me.
Marvin:
[6:12] Yeah, there you go. Well, listen, folks, I know it's cold, But as I always say, it's going to be colder in January and February than it is right now.
I owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
And if you're afraid you're going to get too cold, you know, sit down at the vice and crank out a half a dozen or so tight lines.
Everybody tight lines, George.
George:
[6:30] Take it easy, Mark.