Monocacy Creek, July 5, 2008
I fished the Monocacy on a cloudy, muggy Saturday after Independence Day. Air temperature was in the low 80’s, and the sun did its best to peak out between intermittent downpours. Having just tied a brace of snow shoe rabbit tinsel-tail emergers and Griffith Gnats, I headed to the first pool loaded for bear. To my surprise, I spotted a lame doe hiding along the bank. More than an hour later, I was told by the Bethlehem police that there was nothing to do but let the injured deer “die a natural death”. Later, I called the southeast PA game commission, which obliged by sending an officer out to put the poor doe down.
I didn’t fish the first pool, as a measure of respect for the injured deer. And I wasn’t able to raise any fish on the rabbit fly, but I did fool a couple on a #20 beadhead nymph dropper and a #16 black ant. I fished up to the outflow pipe, finding a number of fish upstream of the second pool (and catching a nice brown in the pocket water below the outflow). I also had a big fish lunge at my indicator in the left-hand eddy below the outflow.