An August Week on Spring Creeks in Central Pennsylvania

By: Mike Skoczen, NCFF

Everyone told me I was crazy when I made plans to go to fish the spring creeks of central Pennsylvania in the middle of August last summer. All I heard was that there’s no trout fishing after June. I was told that there would be little or no water in the rivers and that the water that was there would be too hot for trout. Lucky for me, I didn’t listen to any of those people. The person that I did listen to was my friend who lives in central Pennsylvania who told me that the Trico hatch/spinner falls can produce some of the best trout fishing of the year.

I already had the opportunity to fish the hatch of one of the largest mayflies that hatches this side of the Mississippi, the Eastern Green Drake. The Eastern Green Drake is the B-52 bomber of mayflies and can be matched well with imitations tied on a size 4 hook. In the past I caught a good number of decent sized fish during that hatch, but it was nothing compared to what I experienced in August.

If the Eastern Green Drake is the B-52 bomber of mayflies then the Trico is the radio controlled model airplane of mayflies. This fly is imitated with size 22-24 spinner and dun patterns. That’s correct, I said size 22-24 dry flies. I tied up all of the standard flies and a few flies of a variation that I wanted to try. In addition to the Tricos, I tied up a number of size 14-20 ant imitations and size 12 – 16 beetle imitations because August is also terrestrial time and ants and beetles are the main terrestrials in the area. The spinners fall in the morning when the air temperatures reach around 70°, then lasts for about 2 – 3 hours. After the Tricos are done, the rest of the day is spent working small nymphs and terrestrials until the evening when streamers worked along the banks can produce some really nice fish.

So how good was the fishing? My friend and I arrived at Spring Creek just below Fisherman’s Paradise at around 8:15. The river was low and gin clear and ran at around 58°. I had no problem spotting fish from the banks that day, and a lot of them apparently had no problem spotting me. I slowly worked my way into position and began to tie on my tandem of dry flies. I was using a size 20 Blue Quill as an indicator fly to help find the size 24 Trico spinner. I made a few random casts to nearby fish and picked up a few fish here and there on the Blue Quill. At about 9:30 my friend whistled to get my attention from his position below me and pointed up at the sky. The sun was just beginning to clear the trees on the East side of Spring Creek and shining down over the stream.

I looked up to see an enormous cloud of tiny flies dancing above the stream, and within a few minutes the feeding began. The fish were feeding heavily all around me as they swam at or just below the surface scooping up numerous quantities of Tricos with gapping mouths. Enthusiastically, I started casting to the closest fish and managed to scare a number of them with bad casts. To help settle down a bit I retied my trailer fly with a piece of 7X tippet. I began to make better casts, aiming for spots just inches in front of the feeding fish and I began to land some fish.

By this time the feeding frenzy was in full swing and I was getting strikes on almost every cast. I missed many strikes because I was still getting used to finding the fly, but I landed over 15 trout in that 2 hours, and missed nearly as many. The number of trout was good enough to make it a great morning, but that wasn’t all.

Among the trout landed was a 20” Rainbow Trout, three 18” – 19” Brown Trout, and many trout that were 15” or longer. Not bad for two hours of dry fly fishing with size 24 flies. I was blessed with some tremendous Trico spinner falls all week long on Spring Creek, Fishing Creek, and Elk Creek. In the 4 days that I fished I had three 20+ fish days and one 15+ fish day. Even on the ultra popular Spring Creek I hardly saw any other fishermen all day long and I landed about 15 fish that were 17” or larger. I had a blast all day long, and needless to say, I’m going again this year.