Spring Creek, Centre Co., 6/04/14

[wbranch]

Wednesday June 04, Centre County, Spring Creek, Benner Springs bridge to about 3/4 mile down stream. Water clarity - somewhat turbid. Weather; sunny from 7 - 11, then mixed clouds and sun, and later all clouds. Fished all day 7:00 - 7:00 with a one hour break for lunch.

Fished the Canyon section and right away was getting into fat and feisty wild browns. From 7:00 - 11:00 all my fish were caught on either a #16 BH epoxy pheasant tail or a #14 Walt's Worm. In the later afternoon I was doing best with a #16 gray scud. Many of the fish I caught had their mouths just crammed full of scuds and olive caddis pupa.

Only saw three rises the entire day which is pretty mind boggling. Saw one steno and three big, #12, rusty spinners. Don't know what they were didn't matter since there were so few of them. The TCO web site indicated there were still plenty of Sulfurs on Spring Creek. I stayed until 7:00 and never saw a single bug. It started to drizzle. Not crowded but for mid week there were about a dozen other guys spread out on the Benner water.

Landed about fifteen. Two measured 15" which was a personal best for me on that creek. The rest were 11" - 12" except for two 7". The 11" - 12" fish were surprisingly strong and just wouldn't quit. Once I realized there wasn't going to be any top water fishing I really got back into the nymphing zone and never used less than two nymphs and sometimes three. Short line, high stick, fish the riffly water and there were plenty of takes. Pretty long drive for me at 2 hours 20 minutes but a a nice diversion from the Delaware.

No pics as I forgot the camera and my cell phone has a lame camera.

 

[sarce]

Great report, thanks. That section has treated me well this year. Might fish there sometime in the next few days.

If you left at 7 pm, I'm not surprised you didn't see any sulphurs. My roommate and I got to Spruce creek around 7 last night and it was pretty dead at first. Then around 7:45-8 pm an epic sulphur hatch started and fish were rising everywhere until 9 pm.

 

[wbranch]

Then around 7:45-8 pm an epic sulphur hatch started and fish were rising everywhere until 9 pm.

Wasn't it drizzling? As I was driving through Bellefonte to get on PA 144 south the drizzle intensified and it pretty much rained all the way home to York. If I'd of stayed until 9:00 I'd probably of been to tired to get home. As it was, without any stops, I didn't pull into my driveway until 9:30. A couple of places on 322 it was down to one lane and it was slow going.

I wonder why on Spring Creek, the Little J, and other PA streams the E dorothea does not start to emerge until 8:00 or even later. On the WB & EB of the Delaware the emergence is heavy by 1:30 in the afternoon and goes on until dark for weeks and weeks.

Is it a water temperature driven emergence?

 

[sarce]

That is a long drive home, makes sense to leave when you did. I am not sure what drives the emergence, I'm still pretty new to the dry fly game. This is really only the second season I've paid any attention to hatches, I used to just use nymphs and streamers all the time.

It was raining the whole time we were on spruce and was actually coming down pretty hard when we left.

 

[wbranch]

Did you land any good fish? Weree you on the Penn State water?

 

[pcray1231]

I'm familiar with the central PA streams, but not the D and it's branches, so coming from kind of the opposite perspective as you.

But yeah, while weather conditions can alter things on any given day, the standard is that emergence happens in the late evening and the spinners right at dusk or after. Later in the hatch period it's even more concentrated to that late period.

Daily variations in water temp certainly could shed some light, but I'd think Spring and the WB should be pretty similar in the water temp variation in a 24 hr cycle? Perhaps it has more to do with varied habitat typical of big water. For instance, photo period matters, bugs are light sensitive. In a smaller stream like Spring, water depth and clarity are relatively constant, hence all bugs get about the same amount of light at the same time. In big water like the WB, the deep pool bugs are in a very different habitat than the shallow water bugs, and hence emergence may be triggered at different times. Resulting in what appears to be a long drawn out hatch. Perhaps on close examination you'll find that it's really not so spread out, but they emerge from this area at this time, and over there at another, etc...?

Even on Spring and the other limestoners, a cloudy day will spread out the hatch over many more hours. i.e. the lighting is more like evening for a very long time. You also notice things like emergence starting in shaded areas, as does the spinner fall. You can even play that kind of thing to your advantage by focusing on those areas first, and having a more open spot to move to later. As things wind down in the shady spot, they're still at peak or even winding up in the more open spot. (and the opposite is true for morning spinners, like tricos, as they fall in the sunny spots first and progress to shadier areas).

And a heavy rain can either trigger or shut off a hatch like a light switch, I presume due to sudden water temperature changes. A warm early afternoon rain, and suddenly the evening bugs are out in force. Water temperature just spiked to typical evening water temps.

 

[sarce]

wbranch, yep we were at the penn state (Harvey) water. I swung a drake nymph (there were some coffin flies around) through the head of a run and had a massive trout take it only a few feet from me. Watched it inhale the fly but somehow, I didn't feel any tension when I lifted the rod. Not sure what happened. That fish was easily 22-23"+ and if landed (big IF on 5x tippet) would have been my largest trout ever.

Best landed was an 11" wild brown that cleared the water to eat a skated coffin fly. I kept that pattern on just for kicks and missed a bunch of little browns while my friend did well on some sort of sulphur dry. Good times

 

[IneFishent]

Great report. Sounds about the same as my report from two weekends ago. Thinking I will probably give it another go tomorrow.

 

[afishinado]

Nice report WB,

Your report mirrors what I have run into most of this spring. High dirty water, or no bugs, or some bugs but no fish on them. While I've doing okay nymphing for the most part, I really haven't been lucky enough to hit any decent hatch with fish on them. So it goes.

Also, great theory by Pcray about hatch times on bigger rivers vs. smaller streams. Never occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense.

 

[wbranch]

Also, great theory by Pcray about hatch times on bigger rivers vs. smaller streams. Never occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense.

Yes, those are all interesting theories. I particularly like his thoughts about water depth and hatching times. Spring is basically a shallow riffly creek 12" - 18" deep with a few deeper runs and pools. I don't fish it extensively but I have fished many sections of it and most of it is no more than 3" deep.

Now the WB of the Delaware has shallow 12" - 18" deep riffles but it also has swifter runs 18" - 36" deep and it has some serious glides 3' - 4 deep and of course many very deep pools 5' - 10'. so it makes sense that based on the varying water depths I may see duns emerging from the very early afternoon until close to dark.

I'm going up either Sunday or Monday for four days. I'm hoping for more clouds than sun as bright days on the WB bode poor for good fishing.

 

[martinlf]

From what I've been told by folks who should know, the WB sulphur hatch, which lasts into summer, is at least in part temperature driven. The water release from Cannonsville creates and sustains much colder water than we find in local streams during our local sulphur time in central PA, and it has led to a longer hatch on the Delaware that starts earlier in the day. Other factors certainly may be at play, but larger streams such as the Little Juniata and Penns don't see the kind of long term early day emergence found on the Delaware's West Branch. It is a joy to fish sulphurs in the middle of the day there--if you can get a fish to take. Which Matt can. I've seen the photos.

 

[wbranch]

Thank you Louis. Here is a very nice brown, 20" I believe, taken in the mid afternoon on the upper WB in late June on a #16 CDC wing Sulfur dun.

 

[mcwillja]

Nice report Matt. Sounds like you did very well. I just got back from the D. I will give you the details soon.

 

[TYoung]

I fished that same section of Spring Creek with my father on Monday evening. The fish didn't really start to rise frequently until around 8-8:30. Even though we stayed to around 9:00, we didn't see much of a spinner fall. This tells me that the hatch still has a ways to go yet.

 

[dryflyguy]

martinlf wrote:
From what I've been told by folks who should know, the WB sulphur hatch, which lasts into summer, is at least in part temperature driven. The water release from Cannonsville creates and sustains much colder water than we find in local streams during our local sulphur time in central PA, and it has led to a longer hatch on the Delaware that starts earlier in the day. Other factors certainly may be at play, but larger streams such as the Little Juniata and Penns don't see the kind of long term early day emergence found on the Delaware's West Branch. It is a joy to fish sulphurs in the middle of the day there--if you can get a fish to take. Which Matt can. I've seen the photos.

By the way Louis, the WB of the delaware river isn't the only place where this happens.
I recently fished the east branch of the clarion river - where the water temp is constantly in the low '50's, coming out of the bottom of the east branch lake reservoir. And found sulphers hatching heaviest in the middle of a hot summer day.