Two beautiful days greeted anglers on last year's opening weekend of the "traditional" trout-fishing season throughout most of the state. They were days, however, that our party of three couldn't make it out of the southeast where the season was already two weeks old. The first Monday of the regular season, in contrast, was forecast to be quite unpleasant. Rain, heavy at times, was the weatherman's guess. What the weather actually delivered to our trout-fishing trio was wind-blown rain, snow, and sleet as we headed to two favorite Pike County streams.

We were not to allow such weather to keep us from the streams we had driven nearly 80 miles to fish. Warm clothing was donned, over which waders and rain jackets would be enough to keep us dry. But in spite of our braving the elements, the trout failed to cooperate. We blamed our lack of success in part on the two previous days of nice weather, which drew crowds to the streams and certainly depleted the supply of fish placed in those waterways by the state hatchery trucks.

Tuesday dawned with cold temperatures, drizzle, and fog. Knowing that Masthope Creek in the far northern corner of Pike County had been scheduled for a stocking the day before, we drove the distance to that pleasant little stream. Success, however, was once again limited, as only one trout, a rainbow, fell for a size-10 Woolly Bugger drifted by a submerged log where the fish was hiding.

With the optimism that dwells in the soul of every fisherman, and with old man sun now showing his fiery face, we decided to try our luck once again on one of the streams we had ventured to the previous day. When we arrived under a warming midday sun, a heart-stirring sight greeted us. In some flat water behind an old beaver dam on a tributary to the Bushkill Creek, brook trout were rising to the emergence of an insect known to fly anglers as the "Quill Gordon."

Here then, we experienced the reinforcement of a lesson all anglers need to know. Just because trout do not cooperate on one day does not mean they are not present in the waterway. That even applies to hatchery trout not long out of the raceways in which they are raised. It has been my experience that brook trout, more than the other stocked species, seem to adapt much quicker to the presence of natural foods. They also seem to more quickly abandon the "hive mentality" that binds other hatchery trout into schooling behavior for a period of time.

Our success, however, had much to do with the behavior of the emerging mayfly. The nymph stage of this particular mayfly apparently migrates from moving waters into slower stream sections before changing into the adult winged form. Such was the habitat we were fishing. They also seem to gather in clusters behind sunken objects, several of which were provided to our locale in the form of waterlogged tree trunks by the beavers that had built and then abandoned their water-slowing dam.

The sun also played a roll in our success, perhaps an effect multiplied by the fact the trees had yet to leaf out. Water temperatures must reach about 48 degrees for good emergence to be triggered in this particular species of mayfly. In addition, the soft bottom material preferred by this species in preparation for emergence has to absorb sunlight and warm a bit. In the early-morning hours of mid-April, the angle of the sun's rays is low and thus unable to generate the warming of the sediment. When noon approaches, however, and the sun is more directly overhead, its heating action on the streambed produces the ideal condition for the mayflies to rise to the surface. That act can bring about a feeding frenzy on the part of the stream-adapted trout.

It is well known that adult mayflies have lost their digestive system and have non-functioning mouthparts. They thus live only a day or two to reproduce and then die. What is little known is that the absence of a digestive tract means their tiny bodies are filled with gases, a fact that helps them rise rapidly to the surface and makes them very light in flight.

It thus was a combination of facts from the sciences of physics, meteorology, and biology that presented our trio of anglers with a situation where we could drift Quill Gordon dry flies among the mix of emerging naturals and have a great three hours of fly-fishing enjoyment on that stream on that sunny April day.

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