This is a little late, but fishing reports of any kind help others
get through their cabin fever.
Friday night was travel night to camp at Monroe Furnace, PA. The
trip was made easier on Krissy and I by using the laptop as a DVD
player and both girls were happy and quiet the whole trip. We got to
camp close to dark and got unpacked. I worked on my pretty much late
Redneck Fly Swap. The ladies (Robin and Krissy - both we at the NEC
X and Tenn IX Claves) worked on their scrapbooking.
Saturday morning, I took the joy of sleeping in for a change and
didn't head out. The girls' father went to his put-and-take stream
in McAlvey's Fort. He came back empty handed, a rarity for him and
made breakfast. I went back upstairs and tied more flys until I ran
out of materials for the swap flys. Just the excuse I needed to head
over the mountain to State College and Fly Fisherman's
Paradise. After getting some estaz and a Whiting 100's pack, I
decided to drop down over the hill and hit Spring Creek at the
Hatchery Access. There were a few cars at the parking lot, but I was
expecting that on a holiday weekend. I fished where my daughter,
Sarra, and I had fished two years ago. All I did there was make a
few fish mad and realize that I NEEDED to have some sort of polarized
glasses to help spotting the fish. The fly shop had told me that the
hatches would be coming of later in the day and I was told to be back
at camp at 5ish for dinner. So back to camp I went to enjoy some
tacos for dinner.
After dinner, I brought Sarra along to try out all the stuff she had
gotten since we had fished there last. I put a dry on for her to
try, but noticed soon that she really wasn't able to follow the fly
during the drift. She followed the line well enough and even seemed
to have a hit or two, but nothing hooked solid. Once she was set
enough that she wasn't going to hurt herself, I took a few steps
upstream and preceded to work a spot of my own. I had tied on a
yellow elk hair caddis and was hoping for my first trout on a dry
this year. I noticed a decent sized fish feeding. I was able to get
myself into good position and made 5-6 casts before the brown took
the fly while it was sunk. Sarra tried to best to net the fish and
it was polite enough to give her several attempts at landing it. I
let this go on for a bit before I took charge and netted it
myself. We were able to get a bad shot with her kids digital
camera. It was given an thanks and gentle return to the stream while
I hung up my rod for the night. Sarra tried alittle longer and I was
able to coach her more before calling it a night.
Sunday morning I was woken to Krissy's Dad letting the dogs out to
run and then off to his fishing hole. This is where Tony Spezio had
sent me some of his Chili Peppers to try out. I got up and met him
at his spot near McAlvey's Fort. It's a stocked stream and he
usually does pretty good there but had only caught one fish on his
last two trips there. I got there and got out the fly rod and fanny
pack and walked through the brush to where he was set up. Mother
Nature had shown her influence some and the path had been moved
because she had blocked the way some with some flooding and
debris. I set up and the tail out of this short, deep pool. Out
came Tony's CP's for their inaugural cast. They were a good match
with my 5wt as I was able to roll cast up 1/2 of the pool with
relative ease and I had room enough to false-cast to 2/3 of the
pool. This isn't an easy spot for me and today proved no different
for me. The current really weakens as it hits the tail and even
turns into a back eddy for alittle too. Often my drift would stall
and go nowhere. I resorted to stripping the fly some to give it
movement. The only consolation was that my father-in-law wasn't
doing any better than feeding an occasional fish and that was it. At
one point, even he got disgusted and walked the edge of the stream
looking for stick caddis' to put on his hook. That was the only bait
that eventually produced a solitary trout. I'm sorry Tony, but I
couldn't get the Pepper to produce.
After lunch, Sarra and I headed back to Spring Creek for some
afternoon action. We talk a walk through the hatchery and she had a
blast watching the reactions to us from the different sized fish. It
was amazing that the younger ones would associate us with food and
make the surface of their holding ponds 'nervous' with movement while
the older ones would swim away and spook at the slighest erratic
motion. She counted over 40 fish that had taken up residence in the
return stream to Spring Creek where the water was cooler than the
main creek. We suited up and headed back to where I had caught that
one the night before. Sarra wanted to splash around some and sit in
the creek and let me wet my line for alittle before I got her into
fishing mode. I tied on the second Chili Pepper Tony had sent me and
let her go at it. Spring Creek is alot shallower than Bob's
Bumblechook Creek and she got hung up some, but was able to get
everything back with any problems. She did have one good hookup that
got her excited, but lost it with a LDR. She was still happy, but
still didn't get to land one. She decided we needed to move, so I
gathered everything up and we headed downstream. On the path along
the creek, we talked to a couple other flyfishers and they told me
the hole at the end of the bend held some good fish, but to beware of
the snapping turtle. Yup, you guessed it, we were off hunting
snapping turtles. Depending on your perspective, it was good/bad
that we didn't find any turtles. I'm glad we didn't. But it was
nice to walk along the bank and look in and just enjoy the
afternoon. I cut our journey off early to look up another section of
Spring Creek I was wondering about but found out that it was farther
from camp than closer and called it a day. We went home for dinner
and we went to Bob's spot after dinner to Kaity, my youngest, splash
around in the creek and get out of the cabin.
We really didn't have much chance after that to head out fishing, but
Sarra has asked to go fishing here already and other stuff has popped
up, but we'll head out soon as I've promised. It was a fun trip and
one I'm sure I'll remember for a long time. Thanks for coming along.
Garry
