Penns Creek, Centre Co., 6/26/21

+1 for the waterproof digital kitchen thermometers. Mine was advertised as being waterproof enough to be put in a commercial dishwasher to be sure they reach sanitary temps. It also has a cool lightning bolt on it.

BFC was 59 at 7pm in the narrows last night BTW. Def up a bit from the recent storms and fish cooperated.

It’s be really cool if there was a page/map where we could upload water temps on the reg. Maybe there already is?
 
Could you please give the brand/model of these digital thermometers that you've found good for flyfishing, or post a link?

One consideration is fitting into a vest without being too bulky.
 
I use a digital model HDT 204K by General inc. lighter than the liquid type. Accurate and reads the temp in about half a second. Easily fits in vest. No bigger than a pair of hemos. About $20.
 
ROVERT wrote:
By the time TCO mentions the 60's on Penns, you can pretty much bet on it being too warm to fish. They almost always have Penns in the 50's. They must call Penns Cave each morning for a temp reading.
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I think I know what it is! They stick their thermometers too far down! Like 2 or 3 feet underneath the ground where it's much cooler. They're not fibbing, they're just measuring the wrong way!
(is that too deferential?)

Syl
 
Tonykocis wrote:
yes, it's TCO and why don't we call them out? they are hurting our fish by posting those bull reports and some people just don't understand it.
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OK, not to pile-on, but I'll relay info from a hot drought summer years ago. I don't want any blow-back for the person who told me, so I'll relate, uselessly, that 'he' is a person in the industry.

He told me that it was an implicit agreement, a part of the culture, I'll say, to believe that Spring Creek ENDED at Bellefonte. OK, back then, the habitat wasn't very good (not much cover, rocks, seams, etc) an the old dam was still there. So the fishing wasn't so great. (in Milesburg, it WAS better, right at the sub-station, in my experience. Yours may vary.) It's also strongly cooled by huge, cold spring in-flows right in Bellefonte. I don't live there, but with all that cold, clean, fast water, I can't see how those trout could get heat stressed.
Even though the water conditions were good, they were left alone by the guides UNTIL, (always an 'until') some newer interst started taking clients down there in the drought.
Of all places, this would be the saftest place to go for the trout's health, but it was just verboten among the industry. They broke that taboo.

I am a big breaker of taboos, but not for business. Don't kick over the apple cart to make a big noise for yourself.

Syl
 
See, I'm no fan of the "newer business interest", but that there doesn't bother me. A guide putting clients on fish.
 
Whats wrong? A guide taking a client to publicly open waters which offer the best fishing for the conditions as well as being among the safest options for the fish given the conditions at the time?

There's a lot I fault TCO for. If it was them that "opened up" lower spring, well that just isn't one of the things I'll criticize them for. That is ok in my book.
 
Sylvaneous wrote:
Tonykocis wrote:
yes, it's TCO and why don't we call them out? they are hurting our fish by posting those bull reports and some people just don't understand it.
Click to expand...

OK, not to pile-on, but I'll relay info from a hot drought summer years ago. I don't want any blow-back for the person who told me, so I'll relate, uselessly, that 'he' is a person in the industry.

He told me that it was an implicit agreement, a part of the culture, I'll say, to believe that Spring Creek ENDED at Bellefonte. OK, back then, the habitat wasn't very good (not much cover, rocks, seams, etc) an the old dam was still there. So the fishing wasn't so great. (in Milesburg, it WAS better, right at the sub-station, in my experience. Yours may vary.) It's also strongly cooled by huge, cold spring in-flows right in Bellefonte. I don't live there, but with all that cold, clean, fast water, I can't see how those trout could get heat stressed.
Even though the water conditions were good, they were left alone by the guides UNTIL, (always an 'until') some newer interst started taking clients down there in the drought.
Of all places, this would be the saftest place to go for the trout's health, but it was just verboten among the industry. They broke that taboo.

I am a big breaker of taboos, but not for business. Don't kick over the apple cart to make a big noise for yourself.

Syl
Click to expand...

I started fishing Spring Creek regularly in 1987 and back then there was good fishing both above and below Bellefonte.

And plenty of people fished it both above and below.

Regarding the expression Spring Creek ended at Bellefonte, I never heard that before. I don't really get what that is supposed to mean.

Plenty of people fished Spring Creek below Bellefonte in the late 1980s and through the 1990s. Not as many as now, but the numbers were far from negligible.

When the PFBC created an official access area where McCoy dam had been, that increased the number of anglers a lot. An official access area shows up on maps, and visitors from outside the area tend to go to those.





 
Acristickid referred to temperature “refuge areas” in general, but I assume Penns in particular. However, in the Penns case, so-called refuge areas could be miles in length as movement from the Cherry Run area occurs annually as far upstream as the Coburn area and back again. It’s unclear that this necessarily always occurs because of temperature; it could easily be seasonal movement associated with other life cycle requirements. I would expect that it does occur due to temps in many years and the distance moved would vary with the combined effects of temps and flows. I certainly see no problem with fishing a stream where the population collapses and expands seasonally and longitudinally in a given area on an annual basis. What makes trout so special; we do that all of the time for other species. Now perhaps what was really meant were isolated, small refuges such as trib mouths. That to me is a different debate.

Troutbert, as for Spring Ck below Bellefonte, I do vaguely recall in the 1976-1979 period, inclusive, that there did not appear to be much angling activity below Bellefonte. I think habitat appeared to be poor, at least what one could see from the road, and I’m uncertain about water quality at the time. Also, did McCoy Dam warm the stream substantially?

I would add that I participated in and led surveys of Bald Eagle Ck at representative sites or a site between Spring Ck and the lake at that time (as well as upstream to Port Matilda at various locations, plus the named tribs) There were trout between Spring and the lake, but they were not exceptionally abundant and certainly not Class A, and probably not even a B. I was never tempted to fish it after the survey, but from what I now hear, it seems that the population in B.E. must have improved substantially. If lower Spring improved, then B. E. probably improved with it below the confluence.
 
Mike, In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, before McCoy Dam was removed, there were lots of wild trout in lower Spring Creek, and in Bald Eagle Creek from Milesburg to the lake.

McCoy Dam did not cause any significant increase in the water temp. Probably less than 1 degree F. Very little water was stored there, because the sediment was nearly up to the level of the dam. The current just flowed right through. I used to wade around and fish in the knee deep gravelly "flats" behind the dam.

I heard from PFBC people that surveys in the 1970s found low populations in lower Spring Creek. And that a survey in Bald Eagle Creek in that period found few trout.

One PFBC guy told me they surveyed a section of lower Spring Creek in the late 1970s I think it was, and found 40 trout. Then about 7 years later they surveyed it again and found about 400 trout!

But there was no reason stated what caused that. Stocking ended, and C&R was put in place during that time.

And many people around here say that in the past the Bellefonte sewage plant was pretty bad. I'm not sure when the new plant was built, but it may have been in that period. The new plant works well.

A new sewage plant was built to serve State College, also, but I don't know the year. From what I've heard, the old was pretty bad. And the new one is quite good.

Sewage treatment improvements may have been a big factor in the population increase.

Regarding wild browns in Bald Eagle Creek, I've talked to local people who said that it was known for many years as a big brown water. This goes back even before the dam was built and the state park created, which was in the mid-60s.

George Harvey wrote about this too, in the book "100 Pennsylvania Trout Streams and How to Fish Them," which as published in 1963.
 
T/bert is correct about the McCoy Dam pool and its fine trout population. The people who took me there did so with the restriction that I not discuss it or write about it. It was a special place for quite a while. Now, it is the McCoy ditch.

The West Penn Dam pool downstream was a fine place for nice trout, too. I admired the flycasters who could propel casts from the walking ramp on one bank of the creek to cover the trout rising near the brush on the other side.

Henry Malone of Milesburg was the best caster of the bunch. One backcast, then a powerful forecast, and his fly was across the water at West Penn and nearly across at McCoy. He was the most efficient, graceful flycaster I've ever seen, and I've watched "name" casters demonstrate their skills at various events. They couldn't touch Malone.

Anyhow, neither dam hurt a thing and actually created good spots for challenging fly-fishing for large trout.

Sadly, they are now both gone.
 
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