Penns Creek 5-1-13 thru 5-4-13

The crew headed up to Penns Creek for 4 days of fishing last week, and as usual this water was scenic, bug rich, and just plain awesome.  Matt, Andy, Dad, Marc Billet, and myself decided to fish the bottom end of the creek for the very first time.  We camped a few miles below Weikert and wanted to explore this "new" water.  We fished many miles of water from Glen Iron up thru the Project and discovered that while the Project was spectacular as usual, the open water held up its end of the bargain too.

Each new stretch of river fished gave up multiple hook-ups, and showed the bug life Penn's is famous for.  The days gave us a sampling of remaining Hendricksons, up start March Browns, Tan and Black caddis, small olives, ubiquitous crane flies, and a solid brown stonefly.  Dry fly fishing was best on spinner falls in the evenings, but some persistence with March Brown duns also paid dividends.

Nymphing brought the most trout to the net though.  A full box of ties encompassing each and every subaquatic genera was the menu the trout responded to.  This stream certainly pushes the angler to be aware of the lifeforms available to the fish, and the tier to match them all.  If it was easy it wouldn't be Penns Creek!



























All in all the fishing was decent to good, and our excursion to the bottom end of the trout water proved successful.  Anyone looking for some new holes to look at on this famous water would benefit from exploring the miles and miles of water on this end.

 

 

 

A Couple More Pics From The Trip

Billy Getting It Done On Nymph's

Billet Showcasing An Awesome Brown In The Open Water

Evening Spinner Fall Rewarding Billet

Great Feeling Catching Wild Brown Trout In Non Regulated Water

Perfecting The Roll Cast

Grannom's In The House : Pictures

Just wanted to add some pictures to Matt's post. 

Close-up of a Fishing Creek Brown

Hard to beat the color on a Wild Brown

One of the most scenic streams in PA

This guy was having a feast! Choking down a Sculpin while eating a Sucker Spawn. 

Great day to be on the stream.

Grannom's In The House

   A crew of us went up to Central PA for the day in hopes of catching a few mid April hatches and rising fish. We arrived at the Narrows section of Fishing Creek around 8:30am. The weather was in the mid 60's with overcast skies and rain showers. Perfect day for a hatch! The water was flowing a bit high for our liking so we all decided to rig up nymph's until fish started rising.

   Well the nymphing was tough, not unexpected for us at Fishing Creek when the water isn't perfect. We did manage to fool a few trout, mostly on Sucker Spawn's but we did get a few on Grannom Nymph's as well. Mike had numerous fish chasing streamers throughout the day also. We did see bugs and plenty of them, the Grannom was in full force but no fish seemed interested in these guys even underneath with wet fly patterns. The Hendrickson also showed an appearance in decent numbers along with some Blue Quill's.

   After Fishing Creek kicked our butt for 7 hours we decided to hit up Spring Creek on the way home. The water was slightly off color but had great flow to it. There were still some BWO'S coming off at 5pm but we had limited surface activity. We each picked up a few on nymph's but the fishing was pretty slow. Overall it was a below average day on all streams but it was nice to get out and enjoy the day with family and friends on the water!

 

 

Hot Flies Fishing Creek:

 

#14-#12 Sucker Spawn

#14 Grannom Nymph

 

Hot Flies Spring Creek:

#16 Mike Midge

#18 Pheasant Tail

#12 Sucker Spawn



Penn's Creek 4-27-12 thru 5-3-12 Wrap-up

All of the previous posts by Matt and Andy tell the story pretty well, so I'll just wrap the whole trip up.  What started out as cool to down right cold weather and decent fishing turned to cool, cloudy fantastic fishing, then to sweltering mid-June like fishing over the course of the seven days.  The first few days produced excellent bug activity with some risers in the day and decent rising at night.  The March Brown duns and spinners were the stars most of the week, with sulphurs coming in second.  The real surprise for the first four days was the lack of success on any stonefly nymph patterns, and BH pheasant tails, dark sulphur nymphs, and small Copper Johns were the highlight underneath.  Wednesday dawned cloudy with the threat of rain, and that combination produced the highest catch rates of the trip.  Stonefly nymphs reasserted there dominance, thank goodness, and the nymphing was the best I've had on Penn's in some time.  Cast after cast brought fish to the net in Penn's Creeks' ubiquitous pocket water.  Wednesday night the evening skies represented the bulk of the insect life that abounds in the catch and release section of Penn's.  Mayfly duns, emergers, spinners, Caddis flies, Midges, Craneflies, and even large Perla Stones were all present.  The two top producers were large yellow Stimulators and huge March Brown Rusty Spinners, followed by fast and furious Sulphur activity.  After a late night recounting the days' catches, the tinks and taps of rain started hitting the camper roof as we dozed off.  Thursday's excursion to the water was disappointing because the heavy rains muddied the water significantly.  While the fishing on Penn's doesn't stop because of the water, I've fished the mud so many times the last few years it wasn't appealing, so off we went in search of cleaner waters.  Fishing creek was slightly up and murky, but as has occurred so many times, Spring Creek saved the day.  Sunny, 85F temps made the fishing tough, but the afternoon thunder shower was short lived and turbo charged the fishing for the last few hours on Sulphur nymphs and dries.  The short lived showers were heavy rain events on Fishing and Penn's, so we ended our excursion a day short.  While the rain shortened our trip, it was needed very badly on Penn's so I won't complain; in fact I hope the trend continues in Centre County and beyond as Spring Creek and the Little J remain low.  All in all a great trip with Penn's being Penn's, each day presenting new twists and challenges.  The top patterns for the trip:

Dry

March Brown #12

Rusty Spinner #8

Sulpher #14-#16

Sulpher Spinner #14

#14 Tan Caddis

#8 Yellow Stimulator

Wet

#8 Stonefly nymphs

#12-#16 Dark Sulphur nymph

#12-#14 Copper John, pick a color and cast it

#14 BHPT

#12 Green Weenie



Fishing Creek Report 5-16-2011

We decided to head over to Fishing Creek the next day because it usually holds up better during a rain. To our liking the stream was a bit off color but very fishable. We nymphed hard all day picking up a few fish here and there. About 30 minutes before dark we each got some action on a Sulphur dry fly, nothing spectacular but welcomed after a hard day of nymphing. The Sulphur did not hatch in great numbers....seemed like the hatch was just starting on this stream.

Green Drakes and Fishing Creek report 5-28-10.......... IT'S ON!

This is the first time that I'm posting so hopefully this works out.




My brother Andy and I decided to head up to Fishing Creek in Clinton County to get some possible Green Drake action for the last time this year. When we arrived it was obvious after a minute or two the the Drakes were in full force, and even a riser or two on the stream convince us that we would be flinging dry flies all day. Andy stuck with pounding the dun all day and was rewarded with slow, but continual success. My day nymphing was much slower.



The catching stopped altogether around 5:00 pm, I think the blue skies and hot temperature finally shut them down. We had to wait until that magic half hour before dark until the catching started up again. It was worth the wait. Between the two of us I think we landed a dozen fat boys on both Sulphurs, Drakes, or Coffin flies. The health and size of the fish we were catching was impressive, reminding me more of Penns Creek brownies. All in all for a holiday weekend the fishing was good to excellent with medium crowding.

I would imagine that there is about four days left maybe five for the Green Drakes at Fishing Creek, so if your feeling looney for drake mania all I can say is------------IT'S ON!!!!!

June 9th, 2009

The fish that were hitting nymphs the previous day didn't want anything to do with them the next. We tried everything in the box and couldn't turn a trout. My little brother then put a streamer on and we moved a decent amount of fish and caught 6. Black and Green Wooly Buggers were the streamer of choice this day. We took a trip out to Fishing Creek for the evening. The guy at the Feathered Hook told us "The Drakes Are On" We got to the stream and it was dead. Had some action at night on a Slate Drake with a few Coffin Flies. We were a few days late chasing the drake.