This past weekend I headed down to Central PA for a fly fishing clinic held by the US Youth Fly Fishing Team. The clinic was hosted in the Sieg center on Fishing Creek in Lamar PA. I got to the stream at around 12 on Friday. I fished the rest of the day with the help from some great local fishing guides. I caught 2 brookies on dry flies in the first couple of hours and unfortunately got skunked the rest of that day. I fished a lot on Saturday and got some more awesome casting instruction from some amazing fisherman. I didn't end up getting anything until one of my friends and I hiked a bit upstream to a spot we were pretty confident no one had hit. Once we got up there the rain let up and the fish started rising. I took out a Hendrickson spinner with an egg sack as it was the closest imitation I had to the sulphur spinners that were falling. On the first cast with this fly I caught a nice brookie, the second biggest pictured above. A little bit later I caught another smal brookie and a small brown. The next day one of my friends and I decided to get up real early to fish the same spot we had so much luck the day before. After a couple of minutes I caught a nice brookie and seconds later my friend caught the biggest brookie pictured above fishing a walts worm with a Czech nymphing rig. I believe that fish was around 13 inches. We headed downstream to search for some tigers in a nearby tributary but unfortunately did not find anything. We then decided to head back upstream. I headed a bit upstream of where we caught the last. At the new spot there was a promising looking undercut bank and an overhanging tree. We weren't getting anything on nymphs anymore and there was nothing rising. Yesterday I heard some of the guides taking about catching a lot on dries even without a hatch, I put two and two together and tied on a size 12 elk hair caddis, using it as a sort of an attractor pattern. I tossed it under the tree with a backhand cast and drifted the fly inches from the bank. A brown smashed it, swam downstream and continued to jump multiple times. I was able to quickly land it as my friend had another fish maybe 20 feet downstream. I quickly ran over and was able to get his in my net as he left his back at the center. We were both very excited, his brookie being his best fish on a dry and my brown being my best wild trout on a dry fly. We headed back downstream where we found Joe Humphreys talking with some guides. In about an hour he took us out on the creek and taught us the slack leader cast and told us many great fishing stories. After having him coach us for a couple hours he told us to go out and use what he taught us. I then fished for another hour and my parents picked me up. This was probably my most memorable fly fishing experience I've had to date. I caught some of my best fish and learned from some amazing fly fisherman. This is something I would recommend to any kid wether he's an expert or a begginer, everyone there learned something and caught fish.
