Penn State was playing Notre Dame on the weekend but Jin and I decided to sneak in and fish in Joe Pa's backyard, Spring Creek in Pennsylvania, before the crowds clogged the roads to Paternoville.
We started early, fishing first at Fisherman’s Paradise, the oldest fly fishing area in the USA. One of the peculiarities of this location is that there is no wading allowed. No exceptions. You had to fish from the bank and couldn’t step into the stream.
Jin quickly hooked a trout but after that fishing was tough. The trout had lockjaw and we did not have “the magic fly.”
We started with Size 18 flies but quickly found out from another fly angler fishing nearby that the stuff we were throwing was way too big. We needed to go down to size 24 or smaller in order to interest the fish in our offerings.
Fishing picked up quite a bit after the fly change. Jin landed a couple of browns and a rainbow and I followed with two rainbows and a brown. The water was running in the 70's but clear and low, so we were able to see the take and set the hook.
We broke for a long lunch in Bellafonte, PA, then wandered over to the stream that flowed through the center of the town to feed the fish. However the resident duck population got in the way and ate most of the bread we tossed at the huge trout swimming below (no fishing allowed). There was one monster rainbow that was bigger than the ducks and instead of trying to eat the bread it should have grabbed one of the ducks instead.
The rest of the afternoon was spent consulting a map and fishing at various put-in spots along Spring Creek but fishing was slow, possibly due to the high water temperature which was in the low 70's. We returned to spots we fished earlier in the day and picked up a few more fish but called it a day at 7pm because we both had a long drive back home and wanted to get there at a reasonable time.
EQUIPMENT: We used 3 and 4 weight rods with floating lines and long leaders with tippet down to 7x and flies in size 24 and 26.
DIRECTIONS: I took I-270 to I-70 then got onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. From there I took I-220 N into Bellafonte, PA. There is a lot of road construction on I-220 going both ways so there could be delays as the road narrows down to one lane. At one point you will detour off the freeway, due to construction, and take a back road which winds through a residential area and temporarily onto I-80 before getting back onto I-220 N.