Little Lehigh River

Sunday, 6/10/2007 – Little Lehigh River, Allentown, PA

I was told that while I’m in Philadelphia, I just HAVE to get over here to the Little Lehigh. Bingo.

I haven’t seen a ton of trout streams - maybe a half ton - but I’ve never seen one like this. About as wide as a competent double haul, and as deep as a cane rod spare tip, the Little Lehigh is bordered for miles and miles by grasses and trees and fields and woods and flowers and a proudly manicured walking/jogging pathway. With a dozen or so public parking areas nestled along its distance, the Little Lehigh is a beautifully accessible and beautifully beautiful trout stream filled with rapids and pools and grasses and rocks and trout. Plenty of trout. You’ll see them.

When you go you just HAVE to stop in at the Little Lehigh Fly Shop which is snuggled into a tiny thousand-year-old stone building just yards from the river. Proprietor Rod Rohrbach – in business since 1993 when he abandoned commercial banking – will look at you and, if asked, will provide advice over his busily fly-tying spectacles. His pet trout – monsters – swim in the indoor spring-fed stone trough at the back wall of the shop.

His blue-chip, no-exception, first-choice, year-round, all-condition fly recommendation for the Little Lehigh is something called “Al’s Rat” and he’ll give you a typed page that tells all about it.

Rat doesn’t mean rat; it means microscopic flea. I got a few of the large size: #22. (For non fly-anglers, a #22 is approximately 1/16th inch long in its biggest dimension including the hook.) Rod said to really catch more fish I should go all the way to #28 (much smaller) for which I had no intention or ability.

And I had to get a leader with a tip fine enough to thread through that #22 hook. I’ve been around fly fishing long enough to know the drill, and so it wasn’t surprising or a big deal to discover that my line – once I started casting and fishing - looked as if it had no fly at all on the end of it. You can’t see these tiny midges (tricos) on the end of your line; it’s a matter of true faith. Faith that can move mountains is one thing, but faith that can devine a #22 Al’s Rat on the end of your line takes faith to a loftier level.

The river is absolutely stunning and I saw plenty of trout and walked plenty of miles and drifted Al’s Rat through plenty of currents and pools. But if I ever got a strike I didn’t know it. Three hours of this – and also of seeing plenty of other anglers with spinning rods and lures big enough to actually see – and I decided to spend my final half hour with my bass rod. I didn’t have any line smaller than 6-pound (I would have been comfortable using 2-pound if I’d brought some), so I tied on a 4-inch plastic worm that I’d bitten off to 2-inches and started casting it into the swiftest, deepest stuff I could find. Perhaps if the trout were surprised by its sudden swift drift they wouldn’t think long enough to realize it was fake.

It worked. Well, I didn’t actually catch anything, but I did have two rainbows on for a few seconds – around 12 inches each – and got definite strikes from a half-dozen others. I do like to actually catch fish, but going fishless on a stream like this is a real pleasure and I’d do it again and again and again. What amazed me was this being a perfect-weather Sunday afternoon in June and this little river wasn’t crowded. Tons of room to spread out and even be out of sight of other anglers if you care to walk along the path a ways.

Four stars!