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Spring Creek
- State College, PA (Page 1 of 3)
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Totally confined within Pennsylvania’s Centre County, Spring Creek begins life at the base of Tussey Mountain, near the village of Boalsburg. Spring Creek is Pennsylvania’s premier brown trout fishery with more wild fish per mile than any other stream in the state. Limestone feeder creeks--Cedar Run, Slab Cabin Run, Logan Branch, and Buffalo Run (wonderful wild trout streams in their own rights)--supplement cold, fertile, limestone water to Spring Creek’s already trout-friendly flows. Spring’s most productive water flows north, for 20 miles, to its confluence with Bald Eagle Creek at the town of Milesburg. But populations of both wild and stocked trout thrive far below this point. Trout average 10-12 inches, but do not let these smaller fish fool you. Spring maintains a good trout population from 13-20 inches and larger! The entire stream, from its source to its mouth, is catch and release, ensuring that these fish will stay in the stream, ready to challenge your skills. Legendary anglers George Harvey, Joe Humphreys, and Charlie Meck have called this water home. Come armed with your best nymphs, dry flies, and streamers and see if your skills can match those of the Pennsylvania masters.
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| The Story: (Courtesy of Charles R. Meck - Pennsylvania Trout Streams and Thier Hatches - 2nd Edition) |
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I was lucky to have had the opportunity to fly-fish Spring Creek in 1954, when the legendary Green Drake hatch appeared in late May. How was I to know that I had just witnessed one of the last good hatches of Green Drakes that this limestone stream would ever display? Thousands of Coffin Fly spinners that last night fell, as Green Drake duns greeted me on my first trip to this showcase of the East. Unfortunately, evil days were not far ahead.
Great crimes have been perpetrated on Spring Creek. In the late 1950s Spring received several doses of raw sewage, and many of the trout and most of the hatches vanished forever. Then in the 1960s and 1970s Spring endured addition polution - this time from chemicals like Depone and Mynex. Shortly after the last contamination the state decided to take the threatened stream off the stocking list and make it a "no-kill" stream. Guess what happened? Some of the hardier, more resilient hatches returned in abundant numbers, and the brown trout population multiplied. Now, 10 years after the last trout was stocked in the water, Spring boasta an abundant number of hefty streambred browns. Spring Creek no longer harbors the Green Drake, Brown Drake or the Yellow Drake, or for that matter many of the once-prominent hatches.
It's interesting to visit the Frost Museum at Penn State University, just five miles from Spring Creek. Here you can examine vials of mayfly species found in Pennsylvania, including the only remnants of the fabulous hatches Spring Creek once accomodated. Many of these vials house mayflies from Spring Creek before it fell prey to pollution - mayflies that will probably never return.
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