Spring Creek, Centre County, 5/12/2010

[ezpickins]

Just a quick report, it's late just got back from Spring Creek. Sulphur hatch was pretty decent today and worth the drive from the 'Burgh.

We fished in the area of the Paradise. Fishing all early afternoon (arrived about 12:00) was pretty lame (for me anyway) with no luck on nymphs. Though I was only half-heartedly fishing, while waiting for some hatch activity. Finally, there was a flurry of emergence in the late afternoon for about 45 minutes or so with a maddening number of rising fish (I'm guessing around 4:00 or 4:30, I didn't have a watch). However, I was able to fish for several hours after that to sporadic risers with good success.

It was a day when you can lose count (if you are the type to keep count). The type of day when you feel that 15 fish or so is plain bad angling on your part due to all the visible rising fish.

It was the "big" sulphurs (E.invaria), I had better luck with flies tending to the yellowish orange with an emphasis on the orange. Sizes 14 and 16 both caught fish, parachutes and thorax ties. Various emergers worked, underneath and greased to float.

Definitely worth the trip.

 

[eroc144]

ezpickins wrote:
...The type of day when you feel that 15 fish or so is plain bad angling on your part due to all the visible rising fish...

Definitely worth the trip.

Sounds like you had a good day, in spite of wishing you'd caught more. What angler ever felt they'd caught "enough?!" It's one thing not catching anything when there are no flies &/or fish feeding. It's something else entirely when the stream is boiling and, well, so are you! ;^)

EG

 

[ezpickins]

I've got the date wrong too! This was of course from 5/12/2010 not 2009! this taken from eroc144's post from the same day Date: 2010-05-12 Date: 2010-05-12
Time: 12:00pm (start time edited by me) - 6:30pm
Weather: Fog > Overcast > Partly cloudy > Overcast
Air Temp: 45F - 60F
Water Temp: 50F - 56F
Flow: Dropping from 150CFS - 125CFS
Clarity: Murky
Hatches: Sulphur (Invaria)
Results: Thumb upI've been shamed for not providing this info - give me a little break it was 12:45 AM! I just wanted to get up a quick post in case anybody was heading out. to quote JackM: from eroc144's post of the same day Thanks for a great report. We couldn't mandate it, but it would be nice if all reports contained this:

Date: 2010-05-12
Time: 10:00am - 6:30pm
Weather: Fog > Overcast > Partly cloudy > Overcast
Air Temp: 45F - 60F
Water Temp: 50F - 56F
Flow: Dropping from 150CFS - 125CFS
Clarity: Murky
Hatches: Sulphur (Invaria)
Results: Thumb up

No problem Jack, I know you're just trying to bring order to chaos; fighting against the inevitable increase of entropy and just doing your part to provide a useable database of reports. Seriously though, thanks.

On a completely unrelated note:Has anybody else notice the plague of snails on Spring Creek? I don't know about other sections but in the Paradise, and above in the wading area, there were snails crawling all over the streamside plants. They seemed to prefer irises. Are these the invasive NZ mud snails that you hear about? Or is it just some cyclical population explosion of a native snail? Any way, it's the first time that I've noticed them on Spring.

 

[ezpickins]

Here are some pics to go with the report: 1)Pic of one of those snails - here and there they were literally covering some of the streamside flora (especially the irises).2)Pic of the water conditions at the Paradise3)and pic of a nice bright sulphur caught rainbow