It was warm the day before Thanksgiving (57 degrees). So I took the opportunity to go down to the Trophy Trout section Little Lehigh in Allentown, Pennsylvania and collect a few stream samples with my newly constructed stream screen. After wading into the middle of the creek at the bottom of a pool I opened the screen and planted both ends into the bottom of the stream. After turning over a few rocks with my feet and kicking up the bottom a bit, a cloud of debris and silt stirred up and filtered through the screen. Picking up the screen and being careful not to drop anything, I waded back to the shore to see what was captured.

When you first open the screen it really doesn’t look like much. Wait a second or two and you will begin to see the little creatures start moving and wiggling about.

We primarily found caddis larva and scuds (miniature fresh water shrimp). Using the dime for scale you can get an idea of their size.

Now that I know what is in the stream all that is left is to open my fly box and see if anything can come close to matching what we found.

Using the stream screen is really that easy and will improve your success ratio tremendously. In my next post we’ll cover tying a caddis larva and scud pattern. They really are easy and a couple of the most effective fly patterns to use in this area.