Fishing Creek, Clinton County, 7/11/2009

[salmonoid]

First time fishing this stream. Have read and heard about it many times, and unknowingly drove over it a few times, heading to the wilds of northcentral PA, but never knew exactly where the stream itself was. Fished about a three-quarter mile stretch upstream of Mill Hall, apparently where a dam was recently removed, as there was fresh rip-rap on the stream banks to stabilize them and "Dam Removal" was spray-painted on a tree. Fished from about 10:30AM to 1:30PM; water temps were mid-fifties, air temps in the 70s; partly cloudy day. Saw some surface action in the long slow pool above what I'm presuming used to be a dam, thought I would try a foam beetle, but not even a look, nor did I see any fish. Working upstream, switched over to using a streamer and missed several rainbows and brownies. Missed a nice brownie who saw me at the end of his streamer, about the same time he made up his mind to chase the streamer.. Ended up with three brookies toward the end of my walk upstream and decided that the rain shower was a sign to head back to the vehicle, as we were supposed to quit fishing around lunchtime.

Was staying up Bald Eagle Valley in Beech Creek, for an extended family outing this weekend; others fishing caught a few as well. Timing probably wasn't ideal, but you have to make due with juggling family duties, and such..

I am intrigued after fishing the stream - for the quantity of fish I caught and saw, I'm sure there were five times (or more) that I didn't see. The water under the 220 bridge sure was cold - I'm wondering if it gets another shot of spring water there or something.

 

[MKern]

That stream goes underground and comes back up a handful of times.

There are a lot of great stretches along that stream.

 

[bigjohn58]

Ah water temp is never ever an issue on Fishing Creek. You actually were fishing the stocked section and yeah those brookies are still kind of everywhere and almost annoying although finally getting thinned out some now. Its all class A water or could be if they wanted to call it that. The dam remmoval is a waste of money if you ask me. Only about 2/3 of it was even still there and removing it will have no effect on the stream. Stream improvements should have been done a million other streams then there. The entire stream has wild fish right til it meets Bald Eagle Creek. Also probably 99% of the browns you catch are wild fish. There were a few stocked this year for some reason but past years they haven't stocked any. The only place it really goes underground is a section above the narrows over towards Loganton actually and the section that interstate 80 crosses over there's a big chunk there that goes under. When there's water there though there's fish even in those sections when water is plentiful. I didn't bother getting up early on Sunday since we got 1.8 inches of rain Saturday night but it didn't effect the stream at all so I fished the evening and did half decent.