I’ve wanted to get back up to the Erie tributaries to chase steelhead for a few months. I hadn’t been in Erie since October 2016 when I took my annual fall run steelhead trip. Anyone who has been reading my blog since that time knows that October was a terrible month for Pennsylvania steelhead fishing. The creeks were low and clear and the fish didn’t have the water required to move in large numbers. Because of the poor conditions, I lost interest in steelhead and moved on to chasing lake-run brown trout in western New York. I followed reports from November through January and things improved during that time. Pennsylvania creeks received much needed rain and I occasionally heard from anglers that were fortunate enough to hit a good day on steelhead alley.
Read moreOld Friend, Wintertime On Spring Creek
Ask any serious Pennsylvania fly fisherman what the best trout stream in the state is and they are likely to answer Penns Creek or Spring Creek. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time fly fishing both of these bodies of water while attending college at Penn State University. I spent considerably more time on Spring Creek because of its proximity to the campus. I have many memories spending spring evenings and weekends on a limestone riffle of Spring Creek trying to fool a rising wild brown trout with a Sulphur Dun. Spring Creek has one of the highest densities of wild brown trout per square mile of any stream in the state. And it al has miles of fishable water that is accessible to the public. It is truly a fly fishing gem of the east and probably the entire country.
Read moreSuburban Wild Trout On The Monocacy Creek
Last week I stumbled across an old Game & Fish Magazine article from 2010 called Our Finest February Trout Streams. In the article, Mike Kaufmann, an Area Fisheries Manager for the PA Fish & Boat Commission, mentions a naturally reproducing wild brown trout population on the Monocacy Creek (“Monocacy”). This peaked my interest because the Monocacy flows through the busy suburb of Bethlehem, located in the heart of the Lehigh Valley. Kaufmann also mentions that three rainbow trout were harvested out of the Monocacy in 2009 that weighed over 10 pounds. That really got my attention. I’d never fished the Monocacy before but I’d heard the name. I recalled chatting with a former employee of TCO Fly Shop in Reading that had shown me pictures of two good-sized wild brown trout he’d caught in the Monocacy. I decided I’d head there to explore some new water.
Read moreSearching For Wild Trout On The Gunpowder
On Saturday morning for the first time in a long time I drove south to fly fish. I headed to one of Trout Unlimited’s Top 100 Streams in America, the Gunpowder Falls River (“Gunpowder”), located in eastern Maryland. The Gunpowder Falls River is a tributary to the Gunpowder River, which eventually flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The Gunpowder is a tail water of the Prettyboy Reservoir and the water stays cool year around because of the bottom dam gate water release. The cool water temperatures make it the perfect environment for trout. According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources website, many years ago their fisheries biologists populated the river with brown and rainbow trout using fertilized eggs and fingerlings. In the years that followed, these trout flourished and began naturally reproducing and the stream can now be called a wild trout stream that receives no ongoing stocking in the first seven miles below the dam. This area is designated as special regulations, catch and release fishing with artificial lures only. In the fly fishing community the Gunpowder Falls River is also well known because it is the water that legendary fly fisherman Lefty Kreh grew up fly fishing. To this day I believe he only lives a few minutes from the river.
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