Youghiogheny River Trout Fishing (MD – Swallow Falls North)

My brother, Dave, was in town and wanted to head to western Maryland after seeing all the fish pictures posted elsewhere on the blog. I was only to happy to cooperate and was able to weasel the kitchen pass for an overnight expedition.

We spent the night in Oakland, MD at the Oak-Mar again.  It’s still cheap and clean.  During the night, we were hit with a nasty storm – it snowed!  Geez, it was only Oct 28!  We woke up to about 2 inches on the ground with the temperatures hovering around freezing.  In short, it was perfect weather for my brother given that he is still on active duty in the Infantry and is an Airborne Ranger.  In fact, he complained that the weather did not suck enough!

I saw that the DNR had plopped 65 six pounders into the Yough up near Swallow Falls, so our first stop of the day was over there to go elephant hunting.  After rigging up, we headed over to the bridge to check out the water.  Nasty.  Brown and fast.  Remembering that everyone else seemed to fish to the north, we walked down to Swallow Falls to check out the water.  Still pretty bad.  No clarity to the chilly, 44 degree water at all and the current was like a riptide. 

We knew this was going to be a loser, but since we were there, we spent about an hour fruitlessly fishing as we worked north from the falls.  Not a single hit and certainly no elephants (granted the DNR page indicated that they were stocked upstream and we were down).

We decided to skip working upstream given the high flow and bad color and skip over to the North Branch as our second stop of the day.

Pressure: None.  We were the only idiots out on such a cold morning

Getting There:  From Oakland, get on Oakland-Sang Run Road north.   Turn left on Swallow Falls Road and park at the lot next to the bridge.

Gage at Oakland, MD

My brother Dave getting geared up – note the snow on the ground

Swallow Falls from the East bank

Looking upstream to Swallow Falls.  Note how nasty the water was

Downstream view.  High, cold and brown water after the snow the previous evening

The trails on both sides of the river are nice and wide.

This was a pretty little stream that merged with the river from the West near the bridge.  Bet this is full of swimmers in the summer. I marked it on the map above.