Thought I'd share a story that was penned by the legendary Sparse Grey Hackle (aka Alfred W. Miller), a one-time Wall Street reporter, and a writer for both Sports Illustrated and Outdoor Life. This article appeared in Sports Illustrated, April 7, 1958, enjoy! - JB
IN PENNSYLVANIA: Penn's Creek by Sparse Grey Hackle
Karoondinha, the Indians called it, but the white men named it after William Penn's grandson, and it appears on maps variously as John Penn's, Penn's or Penn Creek. Most eastern anglers would call it a river. It has brown and rainbow trout, certainly up to seven pounds' weight and possibly twice that, throughout its more than 40 miles of fishing. It is rated by the few experts who know it as the best fly-rod trout water in the East.
In a manner of speaking, no one knows this splendid stream which flows so close to the homes of a million anglers. Even its name is scarcely known outside the Keystone State, because it is fished mostly by Pennsylvanians. And only a handful of those realize its fly-fishing potential, since nearly all of them are either bait fishermen or spinners.
Penn's Creek lies in the angle between the main Susquehanna and its West Branch tributary and is 60 miles long. The first 40 miles of it are trout-fishing water; the last 20 miles are visited only by bass fishermen. It emerges as a full-fledged trout brook, too wide to jump across, from Penn Cave, near Bellefonte in Centre County. At its mid-point, around Weikert, it is as wide as the big Beaverkill, a hundred feet or more, but has more water in it. From Glen Iron down to White Springs, where the trout fishing is ordinarily said to end, it is really boat water, it being impossible to cover the big, long pools otherwise. In fact, it is possible to "float" and fish the river from Coburn down, on the spring high water, and each year a few adventurous anglers do so.
Penn's Creek flows between two great Appalachian ramparts, through a V-shaped valley which is gentle farmland at the lower, wide end but steep and rugged at the upper, where the sides crowd close to the stream. For the middle half of its fishing length it runs between steep, forested and infinitely lonely slopes, a typical mountain stream with white water, rapids and rocky bottom which requires strong legs and a staff to wade in the early season. But on both its upper and lower ends it flows quietly through open fields, over a fine gravel bottom which is weeded in some places. There are but four tiny villages on its 40 miles of trout water. There is not an inch of posted water on Penn's, for it is navigable; the early settlers ran loaded 40-foot "arks" down it on the high water.
The first 14 miles from Penn Cave to Coburn are open meadow water, dead smooth, quiet, gravel-bottomed and easy wading. They are fished hard at the beginning of the season, but this is such lovely dry-fly water that the visitor should plan to try it out after the fly season is far enough along to have discouraged the bait fishermen. Below Coburn there are four miles of water beginning to be a mountain stream, down to Poe Paddy State Park. The "village" (one resident family) of Ingleby is the fishing capital of this upper river. Into this stretch empties Elk Creek, an excellent fishing stream, which just above the junction receives Pine Creek, a small but also excellent stream. The whole area is notable for its fishing. From Poe Paddy State Park down to the junction of Cherry Run, above Weikert, are some five miles of relatively inaccessible and therefore lightly fished mountain stream which is such fine water as to be worth the trouble of walking to it—fast, broken water and deep pools. One, which has the remarkable name of Aumiller's Bottom, has produced some unbelievable fish.
Cherry Run itself, though small, is rated one of the half-dozen best brook-trout streams in the state and can be fly-fished with a short rod. From Cherry Run down to Glen Iron there are about 10 miles of cabin or camp country; the woods are dotted with them, including a number of colonies or groups. Here the valley is widening out and the slopes become gentler, but it is a rough and rugged stretch of water with deep holes, white water, flats, "spinning wheels" (big deep eddies) and every variety of water, all rough-bottomed. Here is where the fishing pressure centers so that parking is sometimes a problem, for space is limited.
Below Glen Iron the river is flat, gravelly and weedy and it is really boat water, but a man with high waders and high determination, plus a good casting arm, can do a lot in it. The trout fishing is generally held to end at White Springs, but every knowledgeable and experienced angler whom I queried said emphatically that bigger fish than the upper water holds can be found in the junction pools and cold holes clear down to and including the confluence of Penn's with the Susquehanna River.
Penn's Creek is a limestone stream. Limestone trout streams are comparatively rare in the United States, but in the central part of Pennsylvania, where the Appalachians end and the Alleghenies begin, there is a whole group of them. "Downstate," around Harrisburg, they are meek, muddy and choked with weed although unbelievably fat with fish food, as are all limestoners. But the northern streams are mountain and forest waters, among which Penn's Creek is outstanding for its size, its wooded valley and its bold and varied aspect. At first sight it appears to be a typical dashing "freestone" (non-limestone) river. But it is a limestoner, and its basic characteristics are those of an English chalk stream however little it may look like one.
FOOD FOR THE FISH
It is so fantastically rich in food elements that every stone is covered with the underwater forms of stream insects, and the water is a milky gray-green with plankton and other microscopic food organisms. It is always so cool that it has fine fly-fishing all summer long. It carries through the winter as much as 75% (an incredible proportion on any other type of stream) of the stocked fish left in it at the end of the fishing season, since it never has destructive "anchor," or bottom, ice. Its flow is so stable that even after going without any rainfall worth mentioning between early April and late September last year, it was down by only about two feet and fishable right up to its source. And all because of its limestone spring origin.
As a "composite" stream, Penn's Creek has fewer of the round-bodied, free-swimming and burrowing types of May fly nymphs than are found in the "pure" limestoners. But it has incredible quantities and innumerable species of the flat-bodied clambering types characteristic of fast water. It is loaded, too, with the big black-and-yellow stone fly nymphs and with various caddis, including the grannom with the green egg sac. Fishermen coming out of the stream often find the whole front of their waders covered with crawling caddis flies and gluey egg masses.
The main hatches on Penn's Creek begin in early April with a small dark-winged Ephemerella, which is imitated by the artificial Hendrickson and the Red Quill. Then from late April into late May there comes every day, conveniently between 10 o'clock and noon, a good solid hatch of small "sulphurs" of the Ephemerella subvaria group, which look like the familiar Light Cahill (Stenonema ithaca) of the freestone streams but have bodies ranging in color from cream to butter. This hatch is always a dramatic event. One moment the stream is entirely dead and the next it is covered with rising fish as the golden-bodied little beauties begin bursting from the surface and taking wing.
Penn's Creek is famous for its hatches of the shad fly, or green drake, between May 25 and June 15, which, normally though not invariably, are tremendous in volume. As on other waters, the duns—green drakes—hatch sporadically through the day, but Penn's hatches are often so large as to bring the fish to the surface and thus provide good dry-flyfishing during the day. The fall of spinner—gray drakes—comes at dusk like a thunderclap, a tremendous thing. The air is so thick with the huge white-bodied, black-tailed, gray-winged flies that one cannot see a man a hundred yards upstream, and every backwater is covered with drifted windrows of the spent insects. That is when every fish in the river feeds, and it is nothing unusual for an angler to get into four or five huge trout, one after another—fish so big and strong that they cannot be held but run off downstream to the end of the line and break the leader unless the fisherman has a great deal of backing line, skill and luck.
It is a special glory of Penn's Creek that even after the green drake is off, there continue to be intermittent hatches of a great variety of flies, right through to Labor Day, and, hence, good fishing. In fact, the fishing is so uniformly good on Penn's that one expert prefers the first weeks of the season, to April 20; another, late April through May, for the sulphurs; a third, May 25 to June 15, the shad-fly season; and one of the best prefers July and August. Among these late-hatching flies are some, variously identified as blue dun and iron blue dun, so small that they are successfully imitated only with Nos. 20 to 24 artificials.
So little fly-fishing is done on Penn's Creek, relatively speaking, that, to my knowledge, no special fly patterns have been developed for it nor is there a single custom flytier in the area. However, the following standard patterns are popular (note that all except the drakes—which imitate the shad fly—should be No. 14 or smaller, whether wet or dry):
For dry flies, the Hendrickson, Red Quill, Light Cahill, Pale Sulphur (like the Light Cahill but with yellowish silk body in a range of shades), Red Fox, Ginger Quill, Pale Evening Dun and Spinner, Grannom, and the Green, Gray and Black Drakes.
For wet flies, the Hendrickson, Light Cahill, Light Sulphur, Leadwing Coachman and all the flat-bodied nymphs, particularly the Stone Fly.
Sparse Grey Hackle (Alfred W. Miller) at play.
Everyone who knows Penn's Creek agrees emphatically that it is very difficult to fish because the fish are so well fed. They do not strike vigorously but sip delicately after careful inspection, and will not come at all unless the offering is perfectly made and the artificial matches the hatch. With the dry fly long floats are necessary, since the fish often follow a fly, artificial or natural, for five feet or more, inspecting it closely before either taking or rejecting it. The catch of the average fly-fisherman on Penn's is poorer than on many freestone streams but the good angler can really clean up after he learns the water.
It is impossible to bring such well-fed fish to the surface by "fishing the water" with big, fancy patterns when there is no natural hatch. Even when there is a hatch, it is usually too sparse to bring the fish up and start them feeding. So most of the good surface fishing is confined to the period after sunset—and, too often, after dark—when the more concentrated falls of spinner occur. For this reason Penn's is generally regarded as primarily a wet-fly stream. But the man who wants fun more than fish can have rare sport with the dry fly in the daytime if he will fish only to rising fish, and match the hatch.
A CONSTANT STREAM
It is difficult to fish a wet fly upstream on Penn's, since the water is colored and one cannot see the fish coming to the fly. The standard method is therefore "across and down," throwing slack behind the fly to give it a natural drift and allow it to sink as much as possible; ordinarily, it is advisable to fish deep. Many Penn's anglers fish a wet fly or a nymph during a hatch instead of a dry imitation of the emerging dun.
In the early season there is fishing all the way from Penn Cave to White Springs, but after the middle of June the fishing will be better above Weikert. In the inlet pools of Weikert Run, Cherry Run, Poe Creek, Elk Creek and—in Elk—Pine Creek, there are always fish and often big ones, for there the water is always cold. In brassy mid-August of a drought year I found the water at Weikert to be under 70° in the morning and 72° in midafternoon.
Of course there are no records, but casual inquiry elicited the following reports of good fish taken, mostly last year but a few in 1956; bear in mind that Penn's fish run very heavy for size—a 22½-inch fish will go a full five pounds. There are no big-headed lanky slinks in this fat water.
Near Coburn, one man—a great expert, to be sure—got 32 fish, 16 to 18 inches, on locust in 1957 and took five, same sizes, in an evening, on natural May fly. In the same area another great expert took four fish over 20 inches, a 16-inch and an 18-inch fish, all in one day and night. The foregoing were all brown and rainbow trout.
The following were also taken: below Coburn, a 27-inch brown and a 20-inch rainbow; in Poe Paddy Park, a 23-inch rainbow and a 14-inch speckled brook trout; in Aumiller's Bottom, below the park, a 27-inch brown; in Butter Rock Hole (pool) below Cherry Run, a big rainbow. In the same place, the previous year, Guy Gheen of Sunbury lost "a tremendous fish" on a big Irresistible when the hook straightened—probably after dark. And in the next pool below, Mr. Chapman saw a 36-inch brown run right aground while chasing a 15-inch brown last year.
Also last season a Weikert angler got a limit of brook trout up to 12 inches and turned over another of about 16 inches in Cherry Run, on grasshopper, in mid-August. And a week later a boy, Skip Vonada of Woodward, got a 21½-inch brown and a 15-inch rainbow and lost "the big one," on grasshopper, all in one day, in little Pine Creek right in the village.
Note that most of these fish were taken in the upper river, and most of them on bait. The two facts are interrelated. There are just as many big fish in the lower water; in fact, more and bigger. But fishing there requires long casts, a near impossibility with natural bait and a complete one for fishermen who don't have rods capable of it and can't cast anyway.
BIG BY DAY, BIGGER BY NIGHT
Although the Penn's Creek angler always has a real and substantial chance of getting into a big fish by daylight, the devoted big-fish fisherman will go after them at night. And, considering how the Pennsylvania anglers demand meat, it is curious that so little night fishing is done in this, one of the few states in which it is legal. The universal lure for big fish is grasshopper, although in a locust year the fiddle-playing cicada is as popular as the saltatorial, tobacco-chewing 'hopper, and I think the difficulty of getting either one out of a box and onto a hook in the dark is the reason why there is so little night fishing.
But just as effective and capable of being cast far and often besides are artificial imitations of these naturals, along with a hair mouse, a bass plug spanked down and wiggled like a drowning June bug or a salmon dry fly "worked" to imitate a big moth that has run out of gas and ditched.
Night fishing is the most dramatic and thrilling form of fly-fishing, and on the lower ends of these northern limestoners one has a sporting chance of getting into two or three or four big fish, three pounds or better, in a night. However, the angler is categorically warned that under no circumstances should he go at night into water which he has not explored by day. He should carry at least two flashlights, have a companion and refrain from swinging his arms in heavy brush.
The fisherman on Penn's Creek should not grasp tree branches to pull himself out of the stream, and in general should keep his hands off things. That is because there are some rattlesnakes in Pennsylvania, just as there are in every other state that has trout fishing, except possibly Maine and New Hampshire. Fishermen do not see them or even know of their existence because usually they are not found along streams. But they live mostly on mice, and mice must have water, green food and grasshoppers for subsistence. When drought drives the mice down to the swamps and streams, the rattlers follow them. The Pennsylvania angler's chances of being bitten are astronomically smaller than his chances of being killed on the highway driving to the stream.
Experienced Penn's Creek fishermen agree that the spring wading is rough, difficult and even somewhat dangerous; a wading staff is a necessity and maybe even a Mae West, they say. But two things indicate that this alarmist advice needs a grain of salt. One is that the country boys get along pretty well in plain rubber boots, which are mighty slippery footwear. The other is that the strongest warnings come from the most daring waders, those who try to cross the stream in high water or attempt to follow a big fish downstream over the boulders.
"I got into an enormous fish and tried to follow him down," said Bill Grant, a well-known Sunbury angler. "He had me all the way under water three times before he smashed me up [i.e., broke the leader]." No one but a real "algerine" would even try to follow a fish over those boulders.
And that brings us to a fascinating and curious word which is not merely local to the area but apparently dying out. Its derivation is a mystery, unless it refers to the fierce, bearded Algerine pirates whom the U.S. Navy trounced off "the shores of Tripoli" in 1804, but its present meaning is, approximately: a native; an oldtimer; a hard-case hunter or fisherman whose passion for the sport drives him to any lengths, a fisherman who will wade up to the chin and take any chance in order to reach a big fish, one who doesn't shave from the time he goes into the woods until he comes out, nor is touched by water, internally or externally, except when he falls in. It is not necessary to be an algerine to fish the limestone creeks but a touch of it helps.
SLIPPERY FOOTING
Much of the stream bottom is composed of rough, closely spaced, parallel limestone ridges, the eroded tops of folded strata. This makes for difficult wading, but hobnails hold well on it. But in the mountain section from Ingleby to Glen Iron, there are a lot of water-rounded stones too big for hobnails to grip and slippery with stream growths. Here the local experts use chain sandals over felt soles, but good piano-felt soles and leather heels studded with big, widely spaced, iron hobnails will do as well.
The rest of the tackle is conventional—good high waders, an eight-or nine-foot rod, according to preference, and at least 100 yards of backing on the reel. Hard-braided, waterproofed, nylon bait-casting line, 10- or 12-pound test, is strong and compact and tends to float, making it easier to retrieve one's backing. For either wet or dry fly, 4x leader points are standard except for the tiny Nos. 20 to 24 flies, which require points finer than 5x (.005"). For these platyl must be used. Leaders should be nine feet for wet and 12 feet for dry fly. The best wading staff is the one you cut on the stream bank and tie to yourself with a yard of cord. You will need a landing net and, by all means, let it be a big one, a full arm's length deep.
On a stream with such densely overgrown banks the angler is apt to have difficulty in finding the place at which he left his car and entered the water. If he has a small roll of toilet paper in his coat, he can drape a few yards of it on the bushes for a conspicuous marker which may save him much futile tramping and worry.
Although the pampered Beaverkill angler, who will not go a hundred yards from his car to reach the farthest bends, would call Penn's Creek inaccessible, it is easier to get to than any other stream of the area. A decrepit one-track railroad (one train a day some days; no passenger service) closely parallels the river from White Springs to Penn Cave and offers a direct route although it is rough and cindery walking. It is the only means of covering the stretch between Cherry Run and Tunnel Mountain (which is a mile below Coburn) except for a gravel road which comes in to Ingleby and another which starts outside Coburn and, after going up and down some hearty grades, winds up in Poe Paddy State Park at the river. A gravel road follows the stream from Penn Cave down to Tunnel Mountain. From Cherry Run to White Springs, various gravel roads come in to the river at frequent intervals, as any road map shows. Along the more popular stretches the fishermen soon beat paths along the bank.
There are two remarkable fishing spots along this river where one can leave his car, fish around three sides of a mountain spur—a mile for Tunnel Mountain and 1½ miles for Poe Paddy Park—and end up within 25 or 50 yards of his car, to which he returns by walking through the railroad tunnels which pierce each of these spurs. Both stretches of water are fine fishing.
The people of the Penn's Creek area, you will find, are courteous, helpful but independent Pennsylvania Dutch descendants of the early settlers. Some curiosa of the area are worth noting: the area is making one of the last gallant stands for the double bed. Usually a double cabin or hotel room means one big room and one big bed. Also, meat is uniformly cooked to death. What you call a rare steak, around Penn's Creek is regarded as still bellowing and struggling.
Your first fishing trip to Penn's Creek should not be a picnic with the wife and kids but an expedition with a stouthearted companion and a thoroughly reliable car with not too little road clearance. Distances are long and lonely, and towcars and repairmen few and far between. Take a week early in the season to find accommodations, learn the river and the roads and make friends. Then go back in May fly time and convince yourself that there is no fishing in the East to compare with that on Penn's Creek.
(Stay Classic, JB)
