'Return of the Jedis suggests mastery of our craft and after months chasin different species we each found delicate fly fishing skills are perishable...so Padwan learners we are and were ...thanks for asking.
Fritz, Henry and I do dedicate ourselves to getting out more often to keep skills fresh. This was our third adventure to Little Juniata and Spruce Creek about a dozen miles WNW from Huntingdon, PA.
This trip was planned for last year but got virus'd. Our trucks met at the Penn State public access lot on Spruce Creek and we geared-up as dark clouds bore down and pea-sized rain pelted us ...no worries, waders and gore-tex make fast moving storms no more than an inconvenience and Spruce was running low and looked like it could use a drink.
For anyone who cares about such things Spruce Creek is a semi-famous brown trout stream that's questioned presidents' and angler luminaries' skills in its storied past. The majority of Spruce is off limits to the public, but fortunately there's a beautiful stretch kept up by Penn State upstream of its confluence with the Little Juniata in the hamlet of (you guessed it) Spruce Creek. Fritz and Hen drifted nymphs in the rain, but I can report I fooled a nice 9" brown with dry on a special fly rod that came to me by way of Bill Pfeiffer.
She was treat of a catch on his rod and a great memory. With no trout rising and slow action in the rain we left at 1300 and hit Spruce Creek Outfitters to support our local fly shop. We each left with a pocket full of flies and a tantalizing report, that Green Drakes had appeared recently in the evening! Armed with excitement and a few green drake spinners in our vests, we visited familiar waters at the quarry pool.
The river was low but quickly added 80% cfs (recall that rain) which brought it up 4 inches and with it a bit of bank debris and bugs, bugs and more bugs! The frothy surface layer was silly with insect activity in the current seems.
these appeared late afternoon
Soon Yellow Sulphur mayflies were rising through the water/emerging and browns livened up ascending through the water like breaching submarines. Excited by the inevitability of the spinner fall we waited as the sun dipped over a ridge and the bridge swallows swooped and darted feasting on the fat bellied sulphurs. Henry and Fritz put away their ESN rigs and with standard 5wts we brought a few to hand, but unfortunately the excitement of the hatch did not bring all the fish to hand we had expected. Perhaps we needed to stay later?
our imitation
As we were about to leave the river we took one last look at the river and saw a mature brown rising 5 feet from the step-in 2 feet off the bank. Feeling thwarted thus far we threw in a size 16 sulphur dry which was inhaled by the brown to end the day!
We found our way back to Huntingdon's lone modern hotel, A Fairlfield Inn and Suites, bedded down and the next morning, loaded with coffee and Gatorade, made our way to a riffle-pool-riffle section downstream of the Spruce Creek confluence, (join us next year to find out where :-) where we had an amazing day.
sulphur nymph was a producer
We found we could pick up sporadic browns nymphing seams, but had better fortune targeting individual rising trout in deep cuts under overhanging tree boughs.
Instream positioning was key to successful, often sidearm, casts looking to get 3-6 feet of dragless drift to the rising trout. If you could solve the stream-positioning/casting/ drift riddle the browns played their part and we each all caught our share throughout the afternoon.
Hen w a fat brown ...that log structure provided a natural buffet line for feeding browns
Browns-on ...Fritz and Hen double-up
Fritz has enough of the world to himself
Comradery was great throughout, but the catching improved on a steep curve from arrival at Spruce Day until we were forced to quit squinting in the ghostly light of the harvest moon.
Fishing beneath the harvest moon
The best hours of the day were clearly 1900-2115 and the river explored with activity from 2040-2105 as yellow-sulphur and green drake spinners fell to the water fueling a burst of activity. We surely annoyed a nearby campground with exclamations of, "Fish on" or Hens', 'Fritz get down here its crazy/it's amazing mate!" Cause when you fish with brothers like these you always want to put your mate on the best bite 🐟🎣💪
This'll be an annual trip so let me know if you want in next May.
The Catoctin Mountains opened in front of me and I couldn't suppress a deep smile as I jeeped north my stomach grumbling me onward to breakfast with Henry at the Kountry Kitchen in Thurmont.
We've caught trout on several presidential waters; the Rapidan and Spruce Creek and wanted to add Big Hunting Creek to our list of POTUS escapes. It'd been a balmy 47 when I left Virginia and it was 41 when I pulled into Thurmont, a taste of the finger numbing cold to come. I wasn't finished my first cup of coffee when Henry jostled in for a great breakfast and review of our plans. Big Hunting Creek is the major watershed in this section of the Catoctin Mtns and draws water from both sides of Hwy 77 as it flows both into and out of Hunting Creek Lake. Above the Lake is Cunningham Falls where our adventure began.
After working around some construction we found hwy side access to the section above Cunningham Fallsand the fall beauty took our breath away...ok sliding down the water worn rocks of the falls
took our breath away too.
Armed with a 7' TFO BVK 3wt Henry got the first action of the day with a surface-roll to his top dropper in the plunge pool at the bottom of the cascade of falls but try as we might we couldn't get the trout to hook-up. Trusting the metal crews in my boots (too much) I scampered up the smooth rocks and found a bathtub sized plunge pool 3/4 of the way to the top and dipped my dual dropper rig into a plate sized back eddy....WHAM, much to my surprise a 9-inch fall speckled brown nailed my offering. I net netted him and hollered to Henry to check out my net when he scaled the cliff. With a big smile on my face I sat among the Polar Cave-like boulders and didn't need to leave.
The Big Hunting Creek above Cunningham Falls quickly reaches the saddle in Catoctin ridge and loses the steep gradient which channelizes and gives it its character, we fished it for another 200m and walked back to our vehicles looking forward to checking out another portion before lunch. We surveyed the feeder trip in the lower left hand corner of the map above and decided our better option was to fish the special regs tailwater section along Hwy 77.
We noticed the nice flow and pocket water on our drive in and were soon questioning riffles and pools with dropper combos. We both got a few stikes but Henry was the the only one able to land his quarry.
With temperature dropping the the wind starting to whip up the river cut we decided to try our luck 15 Miles West at Beaver Creek. After gas station sandwiches we found our way to Beaver Creek Fly Shop and must have met the owner on a bad day as he didn't seem appreciative of our support your local fly shop ethos and seemed put upon to offer advice...weird. After I told him I wasn't interested in getting lectured about fall redds he broke out a map and gave us some advice (not sure if it was good or a false flag).
Beaver Creek is a classic spring-fed limestone creek. I don't have alot of experience on them and in my view they are advanced degree fly fishing. We tried a bit of everything (scuds, midges, nymphs, streamers) as we hunted likely flows, pools, undercuts, etc. w/o any hookups. As the our line guides were freezing and the sun was dropping behind the trees to the West we finally found a lovely pool with good sized trout feeding subsurface and occasionally breaking the water. Battling numb fingers, iced guides and the fading light we couldn't get these trout to come tight and left only when we weren't sure we could find out way back on the trail.
Our annual fishing trip to Salmon River is a highlight of the year, as much for the camaraderie as the fish, but some years when the salmon run cooperates its simply amazing...this was one of those years.
Paul and Jacob were not able to join us this year so the our fishing fire-team was Bill, Fritz, Henry and yours truly. After beating traffic out of DC well before the crack of dawn I met Fritz lounging against his bumper at our favorite parking pull-out at the top of the Upper Fly Section East of Altmar and just down stream from Salmon River Reservoir. Fritz and Bill had been fishing and visiting for several days and Fritz had the relaxed satisfaction of already having fought, landed and released some monsters. Some years we count success as a single fish brought to hand...this year we didn't even count. As we walked through the woods our senses caught the rush of the river punctuated by splashes from the jumping salmon and cries of 'Fish-on' from the resident anglers at the upper hole. At the upper hole hooking up and landing is a matter of location and drift. Fritz went about 5 minutes before his 8wt Recon bent with the weight and fight of a handsome Chinook (king) salmon, brought to hand on a salmon river flea a local fly tied the night before.
After 90 minutes Henry rustled through the woods behind us his hearty fishing smile letting us know he was happy to see us and to be off the long miles on I-81. We fished till sundown with many hook ups some foul but most fair until we couldn't see to tie on a fresh fly. Here's Henry in the darkness that smile as large as the hump on the king's back!
The next morning found Henry and I at the prime spots at Meadow Run. We hadn't started particularly early and were surprised that there was but one other angler there upon our arrival. As we watched our watches expectantly we finally made our first casts at whaat we guessed was 30 minutes before sunrise, the start of the fishing day on the DSR and then on my second cast with Salmon running right in front of my knees a King lit me up in the predawn light purple. He fought for a good 15 minutes and I was super happy to bring him to hand. As the day wore on we made the acquaintance of the other early morning angler and he was fascinating. He was (well he still is) an engineer from Quebec who fished for steelhead -- he catches some salmon but kind of considers them a necessary evil as they pave the gravel with eggs beckoning the Steelhead will to a meal. This fella more than ties his own flies but makes his own hooks out of stout chemically hardened piano wire! I might have called BS on the story until he showed us one of his many fly boxes...here's a picture of his art.
Henry soon brought a king to hand and with fish in the book and smiles on our faces we enjoyed the morning. Bill and Fritz arrived and for an hour or three we all enjoyed fishing meadow run.
Salmon River Flea -- Salmon Slayer
Henry Took the picture but is in the photo in spirit
The rest of the trip was spent visiting, eating and hooking into salmon after salmon, you'd bring some to hand, lose other good hooks and break off foul hooks. We split our time between the familiar haunts of the DSR and the upper fly fishing section 10 miles upstream. In the future we may forgo DSR passes and just stick with upper section if the salmon are in greater numbers further up. Several flies seemed to work really well, green and black zonker streamers were lights out as was the Salmon River flea a local creation discovered and retied by Fritz to all of our benefit.
Flush with catching all the Salmon we needed to we also enjoyed exploring more of the river in the lower estuary area and found dissagregated water, almost trout stream water holding monster salmon...what a treat!
This smaller salmon and Henry's monster below came from skinny water!
This Epic Photo will travel back to NZ to the Epic shop Henry visited and the Epic Owner
Watch out for your fingers!
We also really enjoyed the upper fly where Fritz in particular made a killing. Here he is working his drift to a tight seam in an otherwise stiff current.
Fritz surveys the run
works his drift along the rock bank to find holding water
enjoys the salmon of his labors
We had other great ties along the way incluoding seeing Henry fall (twice) in slow motion into a fast pool whole hooked into a big salmon -- yes he could have steadied himself and not dunked but that would have lost tension on the chinook so he dunked and skidded alongt the bottom with his right arm raised above the current keeping tension on that fish! Well played by fiend well played.
A large bow (not quite a steelhead) who came to play
Dead Kings were everywhere, note the birds had pecked out the soft eye tissue!
Henry -- salmon on -- the scenery was gorgeous
My stick an 8wt 11'6' ECHO switch w a 9/10 wt TFO prism reel pared with 540 grain shooting head
Sunset over Meadow Run
Salmon Drag marks lead the way home during a night time walk to the Jeep
Sunset at the DSR lot
Thanks for reading about this adventure -- for videos please see:
