Clarks Creek (fly section), Dauphin Co., 4/24/2010

[sight_nymph_17109]

Cloudy w/ occasional drizzle. The stream is very low for this time of the year and hope that we get some rain out of the approaching front. Fished from 6-7:30. Lots of midges and a few caddis. Took 4 fish on: x-caddis, CDC olive emerger, rusty spinner and small dropper nymph. Brookies were very colorful like they were getting ready to spawn. Can't say I've seen that in the spring before.

 

[redietz]

Hmm, I took a couple of brookies in Clarks on Saturday, and was somewhat bemoaning the fact that they're never very colorful at this time of the year. I guess it's individual fish.

 

[salmo]

Were the brookies you guys took on Clark's stocked or native?


Salmo

 

[redietz]

I got one of each -- a stocked fish of around 12" and a wild one of about 6.

(Also some browns and a rainbow, which I don't ever remember catching before in Clark's.)

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

You saying the rainbow you caught was wild?

I never caught one of them in Clarks but I caught one in Mountain Creek. I think more often than not, when a small wild rainbow comes out of a stream that isn't normally reproducing rainbows, you got a rare catch there. Probably the only one if not one of a few in that stream.

 

[sight_nymph_17109]

Stocked or wild? Clarks has both. In general, the stockies are bigger and washed out in color. I've fished water that I wouldn't consider 'good water' (skinny, fast and little structure) and taken some 3-5" brookies. Very nice color, big head, stunted body. Assume they are wilds. The ones I caught last week were 10-12", nicely colored but built more like a hatchery fish. I was just saying that if they spawn in the fall, I've never seen them in still in spawning colors come late April. Kind of strange but cool.

 

[redietz]

salvelinusfontinalis wrote:
You saying the rainbow you caught was wild?

Absolutely not. Nor was it small (in fact the biggest fish of any sort I've ever caught in Clarks.) It was a stockie if ever I saw one. It led me to wonder if some "bucket biologist" has been at work.