Hammer Creek, Lancaster County, 1/31/2014

[Alnitak]

Today my nephew and I decided to try out some new spots and headed to northern Lancaster County. Seglock Run was frozen over, so we went to the Hammer. In about two hours of fishing we caught a combined total of about a dozen Brookies--most of them small, but one nice one that was about 9"--and two wild browns, one 14" and hefty, the other 13". All of the fish were caught in the vicinity of the bridge over 322. Interestingly enough they were not interested in anything except the pheasant tail nymphs. The air temperature was cold but rising, between 32-36F. We didn't get a water temp, but it was cold. It was a little high and not totally clear.

Jeff

 

[Swattie87]

Nice looking fish. The seemingly increasing presence of Browns in this watershed upstream of Speedwell Forge is becoming hard to ignore.

It's more limestoner than freestoner up there, and I don't mind the Browns, but there's definitely more of them there than there used to be.

 

[The_Sasquatch]

Yes there are, but oddly enough I fished it earlier this month and caught all brookies. I was further upstream than 322, though, into the boyscout property. I thought I'd hook into more browns than brookies but it didn't go that way!

Nice to have a wild year round fishery so close to home.

 

[salmonoid]

Might as well accept the fact that the browns will inherit the earth 🙂

While this can be a gradual thing (but currently a process that has taken no more than 128 years in PA), it's interesting to watch it unfold during a time period that we can observe.