Tea Creek, Mifflin County, 3/15/2021

[jifigz]

I fished in two separate stints yesterday with an appointment separating the sessions. Air temp for the first session was below freezing as I was forming ice in my guides. The latter part of the day was roughly 40° or so. I did not take a water temperature but will guess around 50°.

In the morning I was able to land one brown, the nicest fish of the day, on a caddis larva nymph fished under an indicator. I had a sizable rainbow try to eat the indicator and then tried to get that fish to eat a number of flies but failed to catch it.

In the afternoon I returned and fished from about 2-6. I landed roughly 15 more fish all on the exact same parachute BWO dry fly. Simple, white post, grizzly hackle, thread body, microfiber tail. I worked very slowly and covered the water. I targeted rising fish and could generally bring those fish to rise after many casts. It was a pleasant day..there were lots of midges in the air and a few BWO here and there. It felt really good to have a great day of dry fly fishing and I'm looking forward to warmer temps and more dry fly action in the coming weeks. I've been tying basically nothing but dries in the previous weeks and plan to fish dries more this season than I ever have before. Most trout were between 7-9 inches with the best one pushing 14 inches.

 

[jifigz]

Here are some photos.

 

[salvelinus]

That's a nice day!

 

[coyoterahn]

Very nice. A 14” on Tea is a good catch. Sounds like you had a good time!
Last time I was there, I believe January, I had 2 around 11” and I was quite satisfied with those.
Seems I always end my fishing there picking up someone’s discarded trash that mysteriously blows out of their car window!

 

[jifigz]

coyoterahn wrote:
Very nice. A 14” on Tea is a good catch. Sounds like you had a good time!
Last time I was there, I believe January, I had 2 around 11” and I was quite satisfied with those.
Seems I always end my fishing there picking up someone’s discarded trash that mysteriously blows out of their car window!

Welcome to Mifflin County. We are the second poorest county in the state just above Forest County. The amount of litter in this county just plain sucks. But the fishing is pretty spectacular so......

 

[vcregular]

Nice report! I am not sure being poor has anything to do with it but I would put the Blue Route (I-476) in SE PA up against any road in PA for being the most litter strewn in the state. It is an unsightly mess.

 

[jifigz]

I disagree with you about the poverty being tied to littering. We have junk upon junk in Mifflin County..it's pretty terrible. Of course a major interstate near an urban area is going to be polluted with litter. People here just don't respect the land.

 

[riverwhy]

Yes I have noticed some of those highways near philly were terrible when visiting my daughter. Are there designated cleanups on those highways either by government employees or volunteer groups? Those busy highways would almost need to be shut down for cleanups. I can't imagine the amounts of plastics and other trash that ends up in our rivers and streams.
I heard dumping on state forests has been really bad this past year. Have you noticed this in Mifflin County?

 

[jifigz]

I haven't been in the forests much recently to notice. We catch people dumping on our land from time to time, though.

 

[troutbert]

I've been walking the forested areas a lot for exercise here in Centre County and have not noticed an uptick in dumping.

In the last 30 years or so, I think the dumping/littering situation has actually improved somewhat.

There's still a long way to go, but it seems a little better.

In the Spring Creek drainage, we do a massive cleanup every year, with several hundred people, organized by Clearwater Conservancy, and the amount of trash along the stream is now a small fraction of what it used to be.

 

[wgmiller]

I do enjoy fishing Tea/Kish/Honey. Plenty of different water types and lots of fishable water to explore. Tea is probably the most challenging (and least productive) of them all for me. But what it doesn't have in productivity it makes up for in scenery!

 

[wildtrout2]

Nice pics wgmiller. That's a pretty wild brown.

 

[jifigz]

WGMILLER, I tend to have the hardest time catching fish consistently on Honey Creek, actually. Kish and Tea are usually pretty easy to pick apart, although they can both be moody, as well.

 

[wgmiller]

wildtrout2 wrote:
Nice pics wgmiller. That's a pretty wild brown.

Thanks! Sometimes just taking in the scenery is all a person needs...

jifigz - Honey treated me pretty well last spring. An overcast and drizzly day ended up being a boon for my catch rate. A neat stream, for sure!

 

[MKern]

I don't even bother with Tea anymore. When I first moved here, Honey was my nemesis. I loved Tea, even caught a 19.5"er; and from that day on, I've barely hooked anything. And miraculously, I started catching fish on Honey.

Sad too, because I live literally 2 miles away.