May 2 to 4, 2025 – Three Days of Fun, Only One (or Most of One) in the Sun, in the “PA Wilds” – Northcentral PA

Brian's beauty, and couple from Josh.

Josh and Brian invited me along this weekend for what we hope becomes a new tradition.  Josh reserved two campsites in Clinton County for a weekend of fishing, exploring, eating, and sleeping (poorly) in a lovely state park campground.  Brian and I brought a couple meals, but this was young Joshy’s show.  He had the pop-up canopy, the coffee press, the gas stove, heck, even a Dutch oven—the kind you cook with not the kind where you pull the covers over your spouse after a night of eating and drinking.  None of us had fished these creeks, but we ended up putting together a decent three days of fishing despite rain, very few hatching bugs, and ultracold water in places.  There were no tribs or branches that were barren, but some were better than others, at least under these conditions.  When I saw the forecast for the entire weekend, I left the tent at home and chose to car-camp.  It’s a toss up whether heavy rain hitting the roof of the ‘Ru all night is less relaxing that that same rain hitting the rain fly of a tent, as the boys had the same broken sleep each night that I experienced.  

Brian and I took some nice wide shots of all three mitches.

After taking advantage of the sun and dehydrating ourselves while going hard on Friday afternoon, we fished almost as hard through the rain on Saturday and even Sunday until about noon.  Josh fished harder—he actually went out solo on Saturday evening when Brian and I said, “Uncle!” after a particularly swampy and low fish numbers afternoon session.  That said, I have like 15 years on these mitches, so I maybe fished the hardest 😉 That solo evening Josh was rewarded with the best session any of us experienced.  Overall, the fishing was challenging but just rewarding enough for all of us to want to experience a couple of these watersheds again in late June or early July when this region of the state really gets popping.  While trout fishing on freestone creeks is winding down in SEPA, for example, it has barely begun here with water temperatures in the low fifties and healthy spring flows. 

Some collages from Friday's outing in the warm, wet wading sun.

We were thinking of early July with big bushy dry flies, but nymphing was the main event at times this weekend out of necessity.  Some dry fly eats happened, and Brian probably fished dry/dropper at least 60 percent of the time with success, but I tightline nymphed and Josh did too or used a small indy for most of the weekend in order to catch trouts with some consistency.  It’s amazing what a mature forest and undeveloped valleys can do with excess stormwater!  While it rained and rained, and the water was up and deceptively pushy even on the smallest creeks, visibility barely suffered most of the time.  Creeks cleared in an hour.  It is so alien these days for me to see high, clear flows, not electric brown mud soup after only an inch of rain.  We got a couple of inches, I bet, maybe a few, and there was still visibility in most of the creeks we fished.  And wading was relatively easy even in good flows with no rock snot to deal with.

Some scenes from a rainy Saturday on a bigger freestoner, at least in the morning.

Since I have a lot of pictures thanks to the boys sharing all there’s too, I tried to break down the three days and limit the daily editorializing—let the pictures do the talking for the most part.  Brian’s fish shown in the collage at the top of the page was the best brookie for sure, but you will notice a few other good ones in the mix.  Wild browns were harder to come by, not so willing to eat in general, but especially dickish this weekend.  There are a few pretty browns in the collages too, however.  A couple of the creeks are stocked trout water despite being a Class A mix of brook and brown trout, which is a stupid but common practice by the Commish, so there were some stocker bows to keep it interesting.  At least the locals and the fish/hunt camp dudes seem to fish for the stockers and likely keep the stockers, so there is some method to the PFBC’s madness. Sadly, however, at this early stage of the season, those stockers are inhabiting the best-looking holes, places that will surely hold willing wild and native fish in a month’s time. 

Sunday morning shots.

Despite bad to mediocre sleep, we all felt good and fished hard, fueled by our chef and guide.  We enjoyed a meat-forward menu, even some Spam in our morning scramble.  The showers were hot and the neighbors were quiet and respectful.  This “PA Wilds” marketing shite is working—the campground was at least half-full this early in the season and before school’s out for summer.  Trout fishing and turkey hunting are still events out here despite the push for forest bathing and paddling in the nether reaches of PA.  It was cool for me to roll through Lock Haven and Williamsport on my way home after spending many memorable weeks of my youth fishing Lycoming and Potter Counties with my old man and Ward.  Josh and Brian are good company and good fishermen, and I look forward to seeing them again this spring and summer, hopefully before the Josh Jam on the Juniata.  The only thing missing besides more fish, was maybe a fourth man, like our boy Lars!  Then he could say he’s got at least 15 years on me, and I am the mitch.  Actually, fishing mixed doubles like my dad and I used to do with two boats during our weeks in Canada would be a potential improvement over a three-man rotation.  We made it work well, but we may have covered more ground and been able to share more intel if we worked in pairs.  In the end, a fun weekend despite fishing challenges with many belly laughs, boy humor, and even some real talk.  Good times.

Bonus shots