Central PA Summer Trout: Penns Creek

 I got back a couple days ago from a fishing trip to Central Pennsylvania that encompassed three days and four trout streams. I firmly believe there are too many trout streams in Pennsylvania to fish them all in a lifetime, but Mike Carl and I just might try. On this trip we were able to fish four of them including three that neither of us had fished before. On day two we were able to fish Penn's Creek.

PENNS CREEK

One of the advantages of this wet summer is that it has made rivers that often aren't so fishable in August most years much higher and colder this year. We had decided the night before that after hitting Spring Creek in the morning that we would fish either the Little Juniata or Penns. We settled on Penns Creek. 

Penns Creek is a big limestone influenced stream. It gets warm most summers, but the upper river and numerous cold tributaries have allowed wild trout to thrive there, browns and some rainbows. The river is most famous for it's green drake hatch, which by all accounts is probably one of the best in the world. Despite much of the river's long course being difficult to access the green drake hatch still results in crowds. Clearly there isn't as much pressure in August: I fished a mile and saw only three other anglers. 

A note if you are going to fish a place like Penns Creek. Don't forget that there are still wild places in the East and Penns is in one of them. When we got there, after driving miles on a dirt road way over a ridge, we had very little gas left in the tank, no cell service at all, and very little in the way of provisions. We drove down towards Weikert to see if there was a gas station there. Weikert was little more than a cluster of homes. Fortunately we were able to get to Laurelton, which was just a slightly larger cluster of homes and farms that also had a Sunoco Station. I went in to get something to drink. One of the two men behind the counter nodded and said "how you doin young feller?"

We moved out of Pennsylvania when I was 8 and moved to a CT town that I've heard called "small" over and over... I never lost sight of the fact that it wasn't, really. These little Pennsylvania communities, surrounded by acres of farmland and then even more acres of wooded hills, these are small towns. To these folks I may as well have been just some city boy. But it wouldn't take long for me to make myself at home in one of these towns. And maybe I will, sometime in the future, if only for a few years. 

Tank refilled and provisions procured we headed back into the valley. I got down to the water as quickly as I could, excited by the prospect of big wild trout in a new and extremely scenic river. I went upriver pretty quickly, at first testing the water with an olive Galloup's Sex Dungeon. After covering a lot of water types at different depths and speeds I was unimpressed by the lack of moved fish. I saw none. No flashes, no takes, no nothing. So I changed leaders and tied on two nymphs, a SH Hare's Ear as the point fly and a Green Weenie 16 inches above it on a tag, with two split shot between them. No takes resulted, so I traded the Hare's Ear for a bigger fly, Pat's Rubber Legs. Two casts later I took a mid teens holdover brown on that fly and quickly cut the Green Weenie I hate fishing two or three flies unless necessary, especially with split shot in the equation, and I just had a feeling I'd only need the Rubber Legs. This turned out to be completely true. 

I covered all water types, thoroughly but also quickly, until I found the type of water most of the trout were holding in. Then I just fished those types of water and skipped most of everything else. I caught all sorts of trout, all sizes and a dramatic range of colors. 

Then, at the point in a long, deep pool where the chop ended and the flat water began, I hooked a fish in about six feet of water that felt very substantial. I thought I had a big brown on. After some give and take it came up, and it was actually a big fallfish. I was less disappointed and more just amused to be looking at one of the biggest fallfish I had ever seen. 

And then, I caught another...

...even bigger one!

Holy smokes what a monster! She had clearly been feeding well in the high water. I had never seen a fallfish of this caliber in person and it was truly impressive. The photos simply do not do her justice, this was a horse. 

At that point I was already on my way back downstream after covering a mile and a half of water. I met back up with Mike and Paolo, took a break, then went downstream from were we had started. I covered a bit of what seemed to be relatively empty water in a side channel before getting to a great looking hole at the point where two braids came back together. I started to fish that water very thoroughly, because I recognized it as being the kind of spot that would hold a fair number of trout. Sure enough I caught three browns before I even got to the best looking water. 

Then, covering the best looking lie in the spot, I set the hook into something much heavier. Initially the fish seemed to do what it would if it were just spooked, carefully leaving it's lie and staying on the bottom, coming across stream. It kept coming, then passed me on the downstream side. This time I was pretty sure I had a monster brown trout on. I started to walk towards shore, both because I wanted to get out of the waist deep water and I wanted to get on the downstream side of the fish. As I reached the bank the fish came up and probably saw me, because all of a sudden it lost it's mind and charged up and across stream, peeling line off the reel and going right back into the strong current I had hooked it in. It then buried itself in there and planted firmly on the bottom. It took me more than a minute to pull it out of there, and then even more than that to finally break its spirit and slide it into shallow water. It wasn't a brown, it was a big, perfectly clean, gorgeous rainbow, only really comparable to fish I'd caught in the Upper Delaware system.  

I laid the fish in the water next to my rod to get an approximate length, it was somewhere between 19 and 21 inches. I'd wager it was towards the lower end of that range. With a big trout finally caught I went back upstream, this time going up the other braid to cover some new water. I got another brown before I got back up to Mike and Paolo, who were casting to rising fish.

I sat and watched, thoroughly tired and satisfied with how I had done on this new river. Another one crossed off the list, and another I will certainly be visiting again.

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Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.