Tulpehocken Creek, Berks County, 1/30/2023

[DaveKile]

I managed a late morning run up to the Tully today. I wanted to get on the stream before what looks like to be some colder weather coming in this week.

The weather was sunny for a bit and then clouds took over at about 11:30. The air temps were in the upper 40's to low 50's when I left. Really no wind or breeze. The water temperature was at about ~47 degrees, clear and at (140 CFS wrong) 380 cfs is correct. There were few natty looking things coming off at a size #26, which was nice to see.

I started fishing with a zebra midge and tried a few other nymphs. I finally got some action with a pink work and the zebra midge below as a tandem setup. I hooked into a very nice 14" rainbow and naturally let it jump out of the net before I could get a picture.

I hit a few different spots over the three hours of fishing and saw two other anglers. The Cacoosing was running clear. Nice to get on the board for 2023, but I still have a bit of love hate for this stream. I think need to adjust may attitude.

 

[Silent Ocelot]

Thanks for the report Dave! It was a good day to hit the Tully, especially with the overcast we had for a bit, that's what probably caused the insect activity. The zebra midge is an excellent fly to use there, although I personally have a 3mm beaded size 14 sparse pink nymph that I use there that really gets down into the water column and is what I would use now in these cold flows, though 140 cfs is a bit low for that creek.

Glad to see you are on the boards for 2023. I am going to head out tomorrow and Wednesday to see if I can get on the boards. I only have two fallfish so far but have only been out once this year. Sounds like you did pretty well. Tomorrow will be local streams around D-town.

I too share I love/relationship with the Tully, it's s tough creek, even tough to wade through. Lots of walking to get to a spot. I spend more time wading than fishing when I go there.

 

[salvelinus]

140 cfs? That's at Bernville above Blue Marsh. Below the dam in the DHALO It was 440 this a.m. before dropping to 383 around 9 a.m. That's a lot of water.

 

[DaveKile]

140 cfs? That's at Bernville above Blue Marsh. Below the dam in the DHALO It was 440 this a.m. before dropping to 383 around 9 a.m. That's a lot of water.

@salvelinus Yeah that's the one I used and was just writing back to @Silent Ocelot how that 140 cfs seemed awfully high. My bad I should have used the Tulpehocken Cr at Blue Marsh Damsite.

Maybe I'll hate it less when I start using the correct stream guage.

 

[salvelinus]

@DaveKile If I fish the lower end I also use the gauge at Red Bridge.

 

[lestrout]

I like to look at both the Water St. and the lower gauge to assess how much impact rain is having. The upper gauge hardly shows any rise when it rains, but the lower one does.

 

[pcray1231]

Tully:

psst. On the stockie rainbows a salmon colored glo bug or sucker spawn is dynamite. lmao.

The shame of the Tully is that the stocking points are really, really reduced. They eventually spread around some, but there's a lot of fish, and people, right at Rebers, Papermill, etc. But tons of area away from stocking points that just don't have very many fish anymore. I kinda soured on the Tully because it became one of those places you could combat fish and catch a bunch of fish, or walk some and scratch for 1 or 2. Just seems such a shame to have all that water and all the fish are so concentrated at the access points and popular spots.

I know it's stocked with adults now, not fingerlings. But did they stop float stocking it too? Just dump em in in those few spots? I haven't been there in about a year so maybe it was a pandemic thing. I dunno. I went one time last spring, and it was like previous outings. I caught 10-20 fish every time in very short order, fighting others for position, then said screw this and started walking only to not find anymore fish anywhere else.

 

[Mike]

I’ve never experienced “combat fishing” in the Tully. I guess it’s because I almost exclusively fly fish the “bait” area. 😊 The lack of crowding may also be because I usually fish there in May and early June, which is often after the stockings have been completed for the spring or after angler enthusiasm has waned.

 

[pcray1231]

My last trip was last spring. But it mirrored the last few years. We parked one car at the stilling basin, drove around to Rebers and parked there, planned to fish up through. A lot of good looking water up through there. The old "steps" above Rebers, Palisades, up past the water authority, etc.

I caught like 15 in the first hour right at Rebers, and my buddy caught 10 or 12, but we were amongst 4 or 5 other fishermen vying for position in that small area. Walk back to the bank to tie a knot or something and someone slides right in on ya. Got tired of that, started upstream. Not sure we moved another fish after getting like 100 yards up from the bridge. Didn't see any other guys either, so I expect others had the same experience. That's just been the norm for me on the Tully. Cover water, find a bunch of fish stacked like cordwood in a small area with several guys surrounding them, and very little anywhere else. I probably actually catch more fish, in numbers, than I used to in the days of fingerlings and spread out fish, but it's less enjoyable and feels far more artificial, as a result I don't go nearly as often as I used to. It's still a place to scratch the itch on occasion though.

When we drove back around, my buddy left, and I did wonder down to the "refrigerator hole", an old favorite. There weren't a lot of fish, but I did land a large brown there, which was a treat. One of the keystone fish I presume.

 

[caddisflyer]

Tully:

psst. On the stockie rainbows a salmon colored glo bug or sucker spawn is dynamite. lmao.

The shame of the Tully is that the stocking points are really, really reduced. They eventually spread around some, but there's a lot of fish, and people, right at Rebers, Papermill, etc. But tons of area away from stocking points that just don't have very many fish anymore. I kinda soured on the Tully because it became one of those places you could combat fish and catch a bunch of fish, or walk some and scratch for 1 or 2. Just seems such a shame to have all that water and all the fish are so concentrated at the access points and popular spots.

I know it's stocked with adults now, not fingerlings. But did they stop float stocking it too? Just dump em in in those few spots? I haven't been there in about a year so maybe it was a pandemic thing. I dunno. I went one time last spring, and it was like previous outings. I caught 10-20 fish every time in very short order, fighting others for position, then said screw this and started walking only to not find anymore fish anywhere else.

It is usually float stocked?

 

[salmo]

Are there any steam-bred browns on the Tully?

 

[Swattie87]

Are there any steam-bred browns on the Tully?

Below the dam there is some very limited wild fish that are present. Not sure if they’re actually reproducing in the Tully, or, the more common thought is they’re reproducing in a couple of tribs and finding their way in to the main stem.

Above the dam, Myerstown area, there is lots of small wild Browns, along with the stockies that get put in up there. I was up that way a few weeks ago. Lots of posted water and you gotta be careful where you go. Was disappointed to see how de-watered it was though. Suspect something is up with the quarry and sinkholes up there. Everything else was flowing high, but the upper Tully was dead low. Like half or less the flow of what I expected. I used to live 10 minutes from there and fished the couple open sections pretty regularly. Anyone else notice this? It had been probably two years since I had last been there, and everything seemed fine then. It’s a full on limestoner up there and usually held good base flow, even when everything else was super low. Not sure what’s up with it now, but it was oddly out of place low. Scratch that one off the list for the time being.

 

[pcray1231]

Yeah, there's a good numbers of wild browns above Blue Marsh. There's some sizable ones as well Swattie, down closer to the lake.

Below the lake, not really. I've caught wild browns, but they are very rare, and most of the time it's been near the mouth of tribs when I have, making their origin pretty obvious.

It is usually float stocked?

Used to be all fingerlings, no adults. Then they flipped to stocking adults, and from the stilling basin to Rebers was float stocked, and other groups still put fingerlings in. Not sure if float stocked, but from Rebers on down to Papermill always had fish spread out as well. I never fished the stretch from Papermill down to Red Bridge very much, stopped once or twice at the 222 overpass but that was about it. But it was good below Red Bridge as well, and especially down below Gring's Mill was always a good stretch.

Now I don't think they float it anymore, or they took a break during the pandemic, I dunno how that went down exactly. I just know the special reg stretch kind of turned into concentrations (fish and people) at Rebers, Papermill, and 222, with fish numbers decreasing rapidly as you strayed from those exact spots. The Tully is nowhere near what it once was. I'm not saying that's all PFBC management's fault, though. I know the lake was filling in, they were running out of cold water, and all of that, which is what led to the decline of the great fingerling fishery. Short of someone throwing a boatload of money at dredging, nobody was stopping that progression. I think it may have been TU or someone who float stocked it, maybe they just don't anymore, it's not to say the PFBC are the ones who put an end to it. It never had great structure or anything. So now it's just a poor structure stocked stream.

 

[Mike]

pcray, your observation regarding the limited stocking points in the upper section of the Tully DH Area is true, but for good reason. There are only so many float barrels/boats available and individuals willing to do the floats. Float stockers receive their fish by the stilling basin and again at the waterworks. There are many more fish than they can transport, so the rest are stocked at each float “box” loading location and at Rebers Bridge, the only three places that a truck can access the upper DH section. If you ever stood on the truck loading the buckets you would realize the extremely high number of fish that are stocked in that section according to the section’s classification. The lower section has three additional potential stocking points besides Rebers…Cacoosing mouth, Rt 222, the pull-off below Rt 222, and the covered bridge. I doubt they use both 222 and the pull-off below in the same day because they are so close together, but they might.

 

[Mike]

Pcray said: “It never had great structure or anything. So now it's just a poor structure stocked stream.”

To quantify that, and I may have reported this here before, because of a controversy, I once had good reason to walk/wade the entire DH Area in an afternoon and quantify the big fish habitat under typical summer flows. It amounted to about 30-35% of the DH Area’s total length.

 

[Mike]

Below the dam there is some very limited wild fish that are present. Not sure if they’re actually reproducing in the Tully, or, the more common thought is they’re reproducing in a couple of tribs and finding their way in to the main stem.

Above the dam, Myerstown area, there is lots of small wild Browns, along with the stockies that get put in up there. I was up that way a few weeks ago. Lots of posted water and you gotta be careful where you go. Was disappointed to see how de-watered it was though. Suspect something is up with the quarry and sinkholes up there. Everything else was flowing high, but the upper Tully was dead low. Like half or less the flow of what I expected. I used to live 10 minutes from there and fished the couple open sections pretty regularly. Anyone else notice this? It had been probably two years since I had last been there, and everything seemed fine then. It’s a full on limestoner up there and usually held good base flow, even when everything else was super low. Not sure what’s up with it now, but it was oddly out of place low. Scratch that one off the list for the time being.

Swattie, I just sent a copy of your comment to my AFM replacement. This flow problem should no longer exist, but the possible reasons are limited, so it should not be hard to track down. Thanks for the heads-up. I try to keep the “new guys” informed because of Area 6’s steep learning curve.

 

[Mike]

The few wild Browns that you’ll catch come from Plum Ck’s lower end and Cacoosing Ck. If all goes well, there should be more in the Cacoosing area in the future. Additionally, with RT now being able to ascend the Cacoosing up to and past Pendergast Rd to the fairly large limestone spring, some RT reproduction would not surprise me if water quality from above there is not a limiting factor. How cold is the spring? Sculpins were present in good quantity below there in the past. They were also present for a short distance upstream from State Hill Rd in Cacoosing Park along the soccer fields. Just above the park there was a cold water discharge following the natural filling of the adjacent quarry with groundwater. Even farther up the stream went from no trout in the 1980’s to Class A BT today. So Cacoosing has a lot of potential to enhance the Tully a bit. We’ll see.

 

[Swattie87]

Swattie, I just sent a copy of your comment to my AFM replacement. This flow problem should no longer exist, but the possible reasons are limited, so it should not be hard to track down. Thanks for the heads-up. I try to keep the “new guys” informed because of Area 6’s steep learning curve.

Thanks. Don’t know if it was transient or not, but it was wayyyy lower than it should have been for the wet conditions we’ve had and in comparison to everything else around. I was in the Jackson Park section on the west end of Myerstown, FWIW. The stream is split there. Normally roughly half the flow flows through the old canal works, and the other half is in a side channel that flows naturally. The side channel usually fishes better, but it was barely a trickle. I didn’t even bother with it.

 

[zenherper]

I also have a love/hate relationship with the Tully. One of my favorite things about fly fishing is the solitude it provides; and generally, I catch less fish on the Tully the further I walk from the parking areas (and people). This is a phenomena that is opposite to almost every other place I have ever fished. I find the Tully to be a beautiful stream in many areas. I just dislike working around and competing with other fisherman, so I tend to drive to other streams where I know I am not likely to see any other fisherman, even though the Tully is 15 minutes from my house.

 

[tjsingle]

I used to really like going to the Tully earlier in my fly fishing adventures. But ever since about 2018-2019, I have made maybe 1 trip a year just because of the crowds it tends to draw. Not a huge fan of competing for small stretches of decent water as much as I used to be.

I caught a decent, what I suspect to be a wild brown near the mouth of Cacoosing Creek back in Spring 2019 though, which was a nice surprise.