Buffalo Creek had a strong flow and slight color as I recently crossed it at Craigsville, near the lower end of the stream’s Delayed Harvest — Artificial Lures Only project. For the second summer in a row the glut of summer rain has served the trout streams of the area well.

A few minutes later I was geared up and hiking along the creek to a series of pools I’ve come to know fairly well over the years. The faint path — well-worn a couple months ago –—had grown in with the season’s vegetation.

Easing into the first pool I felt the refreshing coolness of the water transmitted through my lightweight waders. Before making the first cast I submerged my stream thermometer below the surface for half-a-minute or so. 59 degrees, and at noontime on a hot summer day. Typically Buffalo Creek would be up in the 70 degree range by now and getting marginal as trout water.

Certain stream conditions lend themselves to specific tactics. When the water is up a bit and somewhat cloudy it’s a perfect time to fish a streamer pattern. That was my line of thinking as I knotted an olive bead-head Woolly Bugger to the end of the 4X tippet.

With the fly secured I started making cross-stream casts, allowing the fly to dead drift, making slight line mends as needed to keep the drift at a pace to match the current. The nine-foot 5-weight fly rod, coupled with an eight-foot leader, helped keep excess fly line off the water. Within a few casts a spirited rainbow trout nailed the fly at the end of the drift, just as the line started to straighten out and the fly rise up, a common occurrence when fishing a Woolly Bugger in this manner.

The next couple of hours provided consistent action. Most every good looking pool, run and riffle provide a strike, most of which resulted in a hooked trout, either rainbow or brown. Though not wild trout, these fish had been in the stream from two to four months now, and didn’t exhibit the naive nature of freshly stocked fish. Few spots produced a second fish after the turmoil of catching the first one, though I felt confident more were there. It was great sport, something few anglers take advantage of once June arrives and the visits from the stocking trucks cease.

Here are a few thoughts on fishing a Woolly Bugger, a pattern most fly anglers carry with them.:

The Woolly Bugger can be fished in a variety of ways. “Swinging” it, as described earlier, is a classic method. The line remains fairly tight and fish takes are easily felt. It’s a nice, relaxing way of fishing. But it can also be fished with sharp rod twitches and/or line pulls, something that adds action to the fly and suggests a live minnow. Or you can fish it upstream, like a nymph.

Though the Woolly Bugger can be fashioned on hooks of various sizes, a number 10 hook is ideal for the streams of western and central Pennsylvania. Olive, brown, black, white and chartreuse are classic colors. Pink and salmon (kind of an “orange-ish” pink) are effective on native brook trout.

The Woolly Bugger is a fairly easy fly to tie, and a great pattern for a beginning fly tyer to start with. Adding a bead head provides more weight to the fly, which is usually a good thing. And it helps keep the tyer from crowding the head with thread, a common mistake when first learning the craft. Additional weight can be added by applying a layer of lead (or leadfree) wire wrap to the hook shank before the body materials.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.