Antietam, 04/09/26

Finally, Brian and Will came to fish. Will and I have talked for over 15 years at the fly shows, Brian and I have talked for around 3 year. So, Brian decided they must fish with me. We fished from 8 AM to 3PM. They really new how to fly fish so it was just finding the feeding trout. It was a chill 38 degrees, but sunny skies quickly warmed up to 65 degrees. The water is still perfect, It is clear, 2.2’ and 42 to 50 degrees. Midges, craneflies and lots of tan caddis were hatching which made some of the smaller wild browns a little more surface active. We still stuck with nymphs off indicators. It was a little slow start, but from 10:30AM to 3PM the fishing was crazy good. I know by 1PM we were well into double digit numbers. We had a chance at a big fish.. Brian stuck a brown, easily mid 20’s. Had it on for a little, but it decided “enough is enough” and buried itself into a big undercut stump. There was nothing we could have done. Still, other than a 7 inch brown we netted trout 13 to 16 inches in that time frame. Just an incredible trout stream.