Oil Creek Venango County 3/15

[Sharknado5]

Fished at Petroleum Center from 2-5 PM today, air temp rising to 40, water temp 39, streamflow 350 with just a hint of color. Some blue sky with broken clouds, moderate wind at times, frozen fingers nonetheless. Saw a couple of midge-looking small flies in the air, no mayflies. This stretch was stocked 3/10 and is a Keystone Select project. Surprisingly only one angler when I arrived doing some euro-nymphing in shallow riffles. He left after 10 minutes. I swang (swung?) 2 wets and a picket pin through the lower riffles leading into the long pool behind the playground area. Worked downstream about 100 yards and caught small to decent rainbows and one brown on the swing, mostly on the jerky retrieve, mostly on the pin. Size 10-13 inches. They were a bit sluggish but not bad. Saw a couple 14-16 inch palomino moving up and down the stream but they weren't interested in my flies. Caught ~20 with about 10-15 hard misses, so got that out of my system 🙂

At 4 PM a couple spin guys came and fished in the lower part of the long pool, they were throwing spinners it appeared, and they also caught fish steadily including one of the nice palominos and a big brown.

I was hoping for a bigger fish, maybe next time.