Where was the water?  Dick, Chris and my brother Dave and I headed up to the NBP last weekend.  Our original first destination was Wallman since it is such a nice looking section of the river, but the lure of new, unseen water pulled me upstream a few miles. I saw that the DNR site asserted that they had stocked 1,000 or so trout in the Gormania section that included this stretch.  So, we turned left at Gormania and drove up to Bayard.  We pulled off the road right after we got thru the town to check out the river. I had been watching the Steyer gage, so I knew that the water was down in the NBP by about 8 inches to a foot.  However, I was not prepared for the surprise here!  We hopped out of the truck where Route 90 starts to veer away from the railbed just west of Bayard and walked onto the bridge at that point. Wow.  There was nothing there.  The bones of the earth were poking up.  We had planned to hike in about a mile and fish our way back out, but this was a loser.  Based on looking at the gradient of the river from the map, we concluded that this was a gentle stretch without a lot of steep pitches that would produce nice holes.  The holes of water deep enough to keep a trout cool and fed would be few and far between. I'm probably wrong on bailing on this section, but after a 3 hour drive to get here, we wanted to fish more than we wanted to hike.  We got back in the truck and headed over to Wallman where the situation was much better! While the water was clearly low at Wallman, there is enough of a gradient and plenty of structure to hold fish and water.  They were hitting hard on black copper johns, bead head pheasant tails and some kind of agreen fly looking thing I just had to buy at Bass Pro Shop. I caught about 10 trout here in the three hours we fished - a really nice morning. Getting There:  For detailed directions, please purchase either the North Branch Map Book for $4.95 or the full 190 page Fishing guide to the North Branch for $9.95.  After checkout, you can download the books instantly. The fishing guide is also available in hardcopy - click here Both books include detailed directions overlaid on topo maps with pictures for the confusing places to get you to the river.  The key difference is that the full book walks you up the river from Westernport to Wilson using over 140 pictures with a detailed discussion of what to expect beyond the parking lot. Sorry to have to do this, but selling these eBooks is how I support the cost of maintaining this site.  Please support the site.

Disclaimer and Warning:  The contents of this site reflect the opinion of the author and you, the reader, must exercise care in the use and interpretation of this information.  Fishing is a dangerous sport.  You can slip and fall on rocks and sustain severe injury.  You can drown.  You can get hooks caught in your skin, face, eyes or other sensitive places.  All sorts of bad things can happen to you when to go into the woods to visit the places documented here.  Forests, streams and lakes are wild areas and any number of bad things can happen.  You must make your own judgment in terms of acceptable behavior and risk and not rely on anything posted here.  Calibrated Consulting, Inc disclaims all liability and responsibility for any actions you take as a result of reading the articles on this site.  If you do not agree with this, you should not read anything posted on this site.

Finally, access points may be different or restricted based on changes in property ownership since posting the original article.  It is up to you to make sure you are fishing where it is legal.