Penns Creek, Centre Co, 4/2/2023

[Swattie87]

FWIW I camped out on Penns Thursday and Friday night and over the course of a couple days caught barrels of fish, and all of them were browns. But last year at this time I had multiple trips where I caught more brookies than browns. Go figure. But then once it hit May I didn't catch another brookie.

Slayin’ em’. Nice.

 

[discomidge]

Slayin’ em’. Nice.

Thanks. The morning hatches are bananas right now. There are freaking march browns about (wtf, so early) and the fish really really like them.

 

[ROVERT]

Rick Niles gives a presentation and it came to my local TU chapter 4 or 5 years ago and he said his sky blue guides average like one a year in penns near one tributary. My catch rate has increased in past 3 years and people have been posting 50/50 in some stretches last year on one of the penns threads I remember. Its usually the skinnier less desirable water or shallow riffles where I get more of them.

I think the reason that I catch them on dries is that they tend to be in the skinny water. It's water I would likely skip nymphing but I'll fish to any riser. I suspect this may also be why the guides don't sample them well. They are almost certainly focused on the better water.

That said, the brook I caught on Saturday was in good pocket water.

While the quantitative value of rod and reel surveys is limited, I would be interested in the details of 50/50 catch rates. What kind of daily catch numbers are we talking about? If someone caught 2-4 fish and half were ST, that indicates very little. If he caught 16 fish spread out over a decent section of stream and 8 were ST, that may indicate something.

Sat/Sun I caught one brook, one rainbow, and 30-ish browns. It is far more rare for me to catch a bow on Penns. That, from my experience, has changed. Seven or eight years ago, I would have said I caught approximately equal numbers of ST and RT each year. The bow on Sunday was the first in a long time.