Winter Fishing Re-cap

    Old Man Winter has slithered his way over Pennsylvania, seemingly overnight, and enveloped these rolling hills with a thick and cold white blanket. I'm back in my little valley carved amongst the limestone canyons of Central PA, tucked in my dorm room while outside the north winds roar on by carrying flurries of snow with them. While I fell sick during the last few days of my winter break, I managed to get out and do some fishing in places both old and new. 

    Right now is walleye season on the Delaware. Starting around Halloween, the walleyes start sliding up shallow in the dark to get ready to spawn. All winter long, river rats such as myself beat the banks of the Delaware, freezing our asses off and crawling swimbaits along the bottom painfully slow trying to coax a big marble-eye off the bottom.

    I typically don't do very well with river 'eyes in late December into January, usually preferring the red-hot fishing that comes in late February into March. However, I was able to chip away at a few, including a 24 inch fish on a husky jerk for my first fish of 2024. 

    

    While fishing a stretch of river further north for marble-eyes, Slavik was bouncing a curly tail jig off the bottom and got snagged. At least that's what we thought. Then it started moving. Slavik fought this fish all the way to the bank, thinking it was a big walleye, until it suddenly porpoised, revealing a bright green back marred with tiger stripes. The muskie opens her maw, shook, and snapped right through the 10 lb test we were using. I'm no stranger to losing muskies, but it never gets less heartbreaking. They're river ghosts, more concept than fish. 

    Something I've been doing a lot of lately is wintertime panfishing. Yellow perch used to be a January staple for me, fishing reservoirs and spillways for big perch on jigs. However, those perch spots I used to beat up on have declined lately, largely due to poor water management on the smaller reservoirs in my area. Lake Galena in South-Eastern PA has experienced toxic algae blooms for the past few summers, and nearby Core Creek Reservoir has similarly had massive fish kills. 

    Lately, however, yellow perch have been making a showing in some of my crappie spots along the canals and backcreeks leading into the river. Slavik caught one of the biggest perch I've seen from one of these spots, where we also put some crappies in the cooler for a wintertime fish fry. 

    Now that I'm back in Central PA, I'll have less time to fish, and on those precious days where I do get to go out, I'll be in pursuit of big wild brown trout, both on spinning gear and fly. 

    2023 was a pretty good year. I got my first double-digit snakehead, broke my personal best flathead, caught a ton of fish, and introduced so many new people to fishing, especially in my home waters. My favorite moments were probably putting my best friend Sharkey on his personal best largemouth, catching that big flathead from the Schuylkill, and getting Slavik onto his first ever snakehead. 

    Every New Year I make some fishing related goals that I want to accomplish. Most anglers who partake in yearly goals make them about catching a certain fish of a certain size, but I decided to take the more experiential route. Here are a few: 

- explore the swamps of South Jersey 

- see the Great Lakes for the first time 

- fish more at night 

- catch a wild trout on a dry fly 

- catch 12 new species that I've not caught before 

- do more overnight camping trips up in the Poconos 

    

    These aren't set in stone and there are so many more things I'm excited for in 2024. Big changes will be coming to this blog soon. 

    Cheers, fishy people. 

October's For the Trout

 

    "And all at once, summer collapsed into fall" - Oscar Wilde 

    It's funny how universal it is the way people find a certain ethereal beauty in the changing of the leaves. How we go for long drives and hikes in October, watching hillsides and forests turn from their summer greens and are soon set ablaze in fiery reds and oranges. How we all find beauty within the dying of chloroplasts; an allure in the cutting off of circulation within the organs of some of our planet's most important living things. Fall's a time of change, when everything here in the North-East starts bundling up in preparation for the hard winters. 

    Our streams and rivers here get what I like to call "the leaf hatch." When the leaves start falling, they start clogging up the water column in slower and deeper parts of the streams and rivers, making it far more difficult for resident trout to find your flies. You got to make a lot more drifts. 

    Approaching one of my local Central PA limestoners, I tied on a double nymph rig with a #14 Pheasant-tail going down to a #18 Prince, and started working the first riffle. Here, the water was fast enough that the leaf hatch wasn't an issue. All of a sudden, my bobber dips down, and I lift to nothing but slack. Wondering if that was a fish or bottom, I made a second drift in there and immediately get dropped. I lift and instantly feel several headshakes before the fish pops off. Onto the next riffle. 

    A few more on the way up, I manage to stick a fingerling wild rainbow on a Prince Nymph. Wild bows are unique in the North-East. Not many streams have populations of true wild fish, and previously, the only ones I've caught in the past have been on salmon eggs in the veins of the Finger Lakes. They're beautiful animals, with distinct mottled pink dots on a backdrop of green and silver. 

    I moved up the creek as the sun moved across the sky and as the wind picked up, the black walnuts began to fall everywhere, soft thuds echoing throughout the trees every few minutes. I managed to pick off a few several more small fish, mostly on the little Prince Nymph. 

    Arriving at one of the deepest spots in the stream, my attention was drawn to a few large suckers sitting on the bottom. I tried drifting the nymphs in front of them, but they paid little attention to anything I had to offer, so I put the bobber back on and began working my way up, picking up a few small browns on the Prince. 

    Lobbing my rig to the top of a deep hole, I soon lost track of the bobber and reflexively set the hook. My 5wt doubles over, and I was soon able to bring to hand a beautiful 13 inch brown on a pheasant-tail. 

    Spring Creek is no longer a stocked watershed, having established populations of wild browns and rainbows from original stockings many years ago. It's a great opportunity to fish somewhere you can guarantee that every single fish you swing your flies past is stream-born and stream-bred. 

Cheers. fishy people. 

    

Who's the Sucker now?

 

    Central PA is full of limestone streams. These creeks cut winding paths through our rolling mountains and hills, staying cold and clear all year round from mountain spring water. These creeks are small, clean, and full of aquatic insects that keep robust trout populations fat and lazy. This also makes them extremely challenging places to fish. 

    One of the most famous of these limestoners is Spring Creek. This is the stream made famous by PA Fly Fishing Legend Joe Humphreys, who developed some of his most famous nymphing techniques while trying to fool trout in this extremely technical body of water. And lucky me, I just happen to now live within walking distance of Spring Creek in State College. 

    I'm very new to the game of fly fishing for trout. I love wading streams or walking along the shoreline of ponds, casting a 5wt with a foam popping bug for sunfish and small bass. However, where I live near Philadelphia, the only trout we have are mutated, finless pelletheads that only exist in our streams from when the truck dumps them in March to when the water gets too hot to support them in June. The only trout I've ever caught on the fly was a stocked holdover rainbow I managed to sight fish on a black wooly bugger. While I'm at school, I'll make it a goal for myself to be able to explore more wild trout streams and call myself a half-decent fly fisherman by the end of it. 

    My first time on Spring Creek was a misty September morning. My first instinct, having little experience with this fishery, was to tie on a streamer and start throwing it at every single piece of structure I could find. However, I wanted to force myself to learn how to nymph. I tied on a black stonefly, threw it under a split shot and "indicator," and started making drifts. Soon, my bobber hesitated and I struck. A few headshakes, a golden flash, and suddenly, the fish spat the hook. Still, that was the first trout I ever hooked on a nymph, and was a huge confidence booster. I continued working my way up. 

    After that, I came across a shallow riffle that I didn't think it would be effective to bobber fish through. Instead, I put my bait-fishing experience to use, tying on a pink San Juan worm and taking off the float, bouncing bottom through the run. A fish ate on the first drift, giving me my very first wild brown trout on the fly. 

    It wasn't long after that fish that I landed a nicer one on the same set up, this one giving a few spectacular jumps before being brought to hand. This fish had battle scars too, most likely from a past encounter with a bird-of-prey. 

    Soon after releasing that fish, in all his scarred beauty, I had to leave. However, a few days later, after leaving my Biology lecture and switching out my bookbag for my fly rod, I headed back down to the creek. 

    Starting off with a double nymph rig, consisting of a #14 Hare's Ear going down to a #18 Pheasant-tail, I caught a few very small rainbows and browns drifting it through shallow riffles. Soon, I approached the deepest hole on this section of Spring Creek. Adjusting my float so the nymphs would hang just above the bottom, I made a few drifts. When I bobber dropped and I lifted, a massive fish flashed below. 

    Holy shit, I thought, this might be a 20 inch brown. It rolled over, gave several headshakes in the current, and then took off upstream, putting line on the reel. As I gingerly fought this fish as much as I could with 4x tippet, amongst closer inspection, it turned to be a massive white sucker, my nymph planted right in the corner of the mouth. I eventually beached this fish, grinning like a madman. This fish probably got caught by the only fly fisherman on Spring Creek who was more excited to catch a sucker than a trout. 

    I love native fish. The ironic thing is that brown trout, which every angler on the stream are seeking, are an imported species, brought over in barrels from Europe and stocked. Suckers have been here since the beginning of time. Native peoples existed for thousands of years from spearing and smoking suckers when they made their yearly spawning runs. They're a fish I can respect. 

    Maybe someday I'll be on the deck of a boat on a tropical flats somewhere, throwing 40 ft double hauls to cruising bonefish and tarpon. Maybe I'll make it to some fancy big name western River, getting giant trout to sip hoppers off the surface. I can choose how my fly fishing journey ends. But I can definitory say that the starting point will always be these small, technical, and beautiful Pennsylvania streams

Cheers, fishy people