Tionesta Creek, Forest County, 4/15

[pcray1231]

Made the trout opener. Nice day, hit 70ish in afternoon. Water temp around 50. Few light showers, nothing significant. Fished 8 a.m. till 2:30 or so. A few caddis around.

Fished multiple areas, moved a lot as fish seemed spread out. Every new run yielded a hit or a fish, then it was done till you moved again. Ended up working up a respectable 11 stocked rainbows. Threw the kitchen sink but settled on glo bugs as that's all I could get to produce.

The rest of our crew didn't do very well. One other got 5, a few guys with one or two, and a few skunked. You had to work for them.

 

[724flyfishing]

I fished Tionesta opening day by Mayburg. My experience about mirrored yours except I only brought 2 rainbows to hand, and missed a few. A friend was spin fishing and caught some big redhorse suckers.

I did see a decent grannom caddis hatch coming off through out the day as well as a sz 16 mayfly I couldn't catch to identify. In 12 years of fishing that creek opening day, that was probably the most bug life I've saw in that area. I didn't see many rises though. The fish are really spread out like you were saying, so maybe the rises are too, so they're aren't very noticeable??

Another comment to report is the crowds were down big time. We drove to the Blue Jay Inn to get ice and there was miles of creek along rt 666 without a single person fishing. I'm guessing it was because of the holidays and the weather forecast making it sound worse than it was. There should be a good many fish left for the upcoming weeks.

 

[Prospector]

I did a little driving around the area and, like you said, Tionesta creek had fewer people. I thought the small streams were really packed. Streams like Salmon Creek, Beaver Run, and East Hickory. The last few years the fishing hasn't been very good on opening weekend due to lower water temps. I heard a lot people went elsewhere this year.

 

[pcray1231]

724, I caught 8 of the 11 at Mayburg. Well, walking down from there anyway, didn't fight the crowds at the actual bridge hole. We started a mile or two downstream but moved up there at around 11 I think.

 

[steveo27]

Funny. I was up there this weekend as well.

Headed up kinda late Saturday. Made it to 666 around 9:30, tons of people at every pull off and bridge. Typical opening day circus. Im sure I drove right past yinz.

We fished a few unstocked streams and camped along the side of a Forest Rd Saturday night. Leaving camp Sunday morning, Tionesta was practically empty other than a few stragglers left over from Sheffield down to Kelletville.

Headed over towards East Hickory yesterday and fished the head waters of Queen Creek. Not what I had expected. Didnt even spook a fish. Creek was full of algae.

 

[RLeep2]

From a wild trout perspective, I don't think there is any water in the entire East Hickory watershed that is worth a hoot, including the entirety of the main stem of East Hickory itself all the way up to Hearts Content. Wasn't always that way, but the last time I was impressed with any of it was during Reagan's first term. There was some decent fishing then, with the exception of Queen Creek which has always been useless, IMO.

Just a POV. I'd love to be wrong, but this has been my experience...

 

[steveo27]

Id love for you to be wrong too.

Ive fished East Hickory, Middle Hickory, a couple trickles that flow into East Hickory (in the wilderness area), and now Queen. Didnt even spook a gemmie in probably 10 miles of fishing

 

[pcray1231]

It's been 5 years or so since I've fished it, but I've been in double digits on east hickory brookies, with decent size. One of those places you cover lots of water with no luck and then come on a good stretch. All well upstream of the upper road crossing.

My dad fished the same stretch 2 years back and caught a couple real nice wild browns in the bigger holes. I did the same a few years before that.

I'd believe it if you said last summer hit it hard. Haven't been there since and I could easily imagine temp issues during a drought summer. But while not a great numbers stream, and I'd hesitate to call it "impressive", it's certainly had some fair quality wild trout fishing as recently as the Obama admin.

 

[724flyfishing]

pcray1231 wrote:
724, I caught 8 of the 11 at Mayburg. Well, walking down from there anyway, didn't fight the crowds at the actual bridge hole. We started a mile or two downstream but moved up there at around 11 I think.

We probably crossed paths and had no idea. I started a mile or so upstream of the bridge around 9:00 a.m. and fished my way down to the bridge. I called it a day on the big water around 1 and headed back to camp for lunch.


RLeep2 and Steveo- from a trout fishing experience in general, I haven't been too impressed with the whole Tionesta watershed. Now I haven't fished up where it branches off near Sheffield, and I'm sure there's a few hidden gems, but I've fished a lot of the 666 stretch and the tributaries. None of them have impressed me. The scenery and remoteness is nice, but from a pure trout fishing perspective, I do better on average in the Laurel Highlands with both stockies and wild fish.

I've read on here before that the Clarion watershed part of the ANF is a much better area for wild fish than the Tionesta watershed. Can't say I can verify that myself, but let's hope lol.

 

[pcray1231]

I've had the opposite experience between the clarion and tionesta watersheds. Both have wild fish. But tionesta, IMO has more. That said, the streams it has are small, and it's mostly brookies. Minister is the well known one and perhaps the largest, although not the best in terms of my typical catch rates.

For the most part, tribs from the north are good and those from the south aren't. Like all general rules, there are exceptions. Some on the board have tied that to geology and acid buffering, which I think has merit. Curious to see if and how things change now that the pH is coming up on rainfall in the area. I don't fish that area like I used to so it's hard to watch it change. I have seen and heard about isolated examples of wild brown trout on streams where I've historically only ever caught brook trout. That doesn't include Minister, it's always had some browns.