NB Muddy Creek, York County, 04/27/2019

[Maurice]

Met up with my daughter and her friend to fish the MC watershed. Through some local intel I learned that the North Branch had been recently stocked and received bonus fish from Huntsdale. The weather was very windy but the sun kept me in long sleeves, water temp, its spring...I don't carry a thermometer. The watershed had received some rain the day before, perhaps an inch or so and according to a fella how had seen the creek in the am the water was dirty but when we arrived it was clearing and a nice green color which excited me. So I led my spin fishing friends upstream and we fished down through, I used one fly all day and had plenty of action following behind their cast masters or trout magnets or whatever bent piece of hardware they were using. Looked like an old beer can pop top or something.

They caught a few between them and missed a bunch. I cleaned up catching mainly wild brown trout, a few stocked browns and one lone stocked brookie.

It was a pretty nice surprise to land a high percentage of wild fish.

A few caddis and a couple small mayflies were observed but only one riseform noticed so I just kept swinging the seams and cover.

A nice day astream after spending the morning demonstrating fly casting and fly tying for our TU TIC release for 3 of the 5 schools we represent. Even saw a pair of bald eagles nearby while getting ready to leave. Perhaps good karma was rewarding me.

 

[Mike]

Great post. Your description of fishing behind someone using a different bait or lure is exactly what we used to do on Spring Ck, Centre Co when it was stocked during my college years. When the trout were short striking lures and not really taking bait with much enthusiasm either we would tell our very skilled bait fishing friend to fish directly behind we two lure chuckers and he would often begin to clean up. The lures seemed to excite the fish a bit and get them in the mood to then take the bait, at least that was our explanation because we employed this technique on more than one occasion over the years and it often seemed to work. Fast forward 40 yrs and one evening I found myself in a line of friends on Spring Ck all fishing in an upstream direction, some with flies and some with spinners. While they were not catching much, I threw on a small Rebel stick bait and had a heck of a good catch rate as I followed about 30 yds behind the other anglers. These experiences always make me wonder when some here say that they can tell that there has been an angler ahead of them when they fish a wild trout stream because the catch rate is slower than usual.

 

[DaveKile]

Looked like a good day.