More was in Store
On Friday morning, June 27, 2025, I pulled my SUV into a streamside pull-off along a little mountain stream in central Pennsylvania at 5:45 a.m. Under the thick tree canopy and a cloudy sky it was still way too dark to begin fishing, so I just sat there and enjoyed the solitude. After a string of 90-degree days, today was forecast to be only in the 70’s with a cloudy sky. The stream level looked perfect, a nice change from all the high water we have had for nearly two months.
At 6:39 a.m. I started casting one of my White Bead Gold spinners. The air temperature was a sticky 72-degrees and the water was 61-degrees. It took sixteen minutes to land my first trout, an 8” wild brown.
The first hour had yielded only six trout until I came to a large flat area about thirty yards long behind a huge logjam. On my first cast I saw the wake from a large trout charging up behind my spinner. It is easy to choke in this situation and whiff on the hookset, and I will admit to that happening to me more than a few times, but this time I calmly waited until I saw his mouth close on the lure. Watching this unfold is one of the things that makes spinner fishing so exciting.
I set the hook hard and a lengthy battle ensued in the open water, the trout taking me back and forth and up and down the creek, testing the strength my four-pound test monofilament and the improved clinch knot. He measured 17½”, quite a trophy for this small stream. This alone was enough to make my day, but more was in store!
After catching the hog, the action died for almost a half hour. This has been a common occurrence in recent years and I suspected some Common Mergansers, a trout-eating diving duck, were the reason. I did not, however, see any of their white scat on the rocks, so I was not sure.
I continued fishing upstream while unfortunately thinking about a possible Plan B. My thoughts also went back to a memorable outing I had just two days earlier on a mountain stream in north-central Pennsylvania.
The highlight that day was catching this 12” native brook trout. Per a thread on the website PAFlyFish a few years ago, many anglers have never caught a bona fide foot-long native brook trout in their entire lives here in Pennsylvania.
Another highlight, I guess, was stopping two steps from tramping on this yellow-phase timber rattlesnake curled up beside a log. When I see one of these it makes me super sensitive for the rest of the day. If I tramp on a stick and it causes the ferns to move a foot or two in front of me or to the side, you can bet the hair on my neck is going to rise.
I also caught a little 6” wild rainbow trout that day, a rare thing for me.
At about the two-hour mark I came upon a female Common Merganser with a few little ones in a deep pool. Luckily, I was able to skirt around them rather them have them charge upstream ahead of me like Mallards and their young typically do.
Once upstream the action picked up dramatically and in the next two hours I caught nearly fifty trout. I caught more browns than usual, but native brookies still dominated the catch.
