June 2, 2025 – School’s Out for Josh, and I Happened to Have Off on a Monday – A Central PA Tour

Beauty.

I guess four creeks in a day counts as a tour, right?  I hit three of them with Josh and one on my own waiting for Harrisburg traffic to disperse before beginning the drive home.  I used three different rods for three different types of creeks too.  It was a solid 16-hour day, with at least 10 hours of them fishing or traveling in between fishing destinations, so let’s stop debating whether it was a tour or not.  As the title states, Josh’s final day of teaching was last Friday, so today was the start of his 2.5 months of fishing his butt off.  I almost forgot that when I took off Friday for my bass trip with The Boy I also put in a PTO day for today.  When we flipped the calendar in the kitchen to June, I saw my genius forethought.  What’s a guy to do?  I texted Josh and asked if he was fishing on Monday, and he said of course.  Then he started formulating a plan to show me some creeks or sections of creeks that he and I had not fished together.  I did not have to leave my house at 3 AM, but I did meet a mitch at 8 AM to start a long day of pretty productive fishing.  The piggy that opens this post was at our third creek of the day, a rather large and, on this day, still rain-swollen limestoner.  Before that, we hit two small creeks whose flows were perfect, and I closed out the afternoon at a favorite medium-sized limestoner that was stained and pushing some H2O, but after the big crick, it was like fishing a lazy river, a cool down from an aerobic afternoon.

The new signature hat?

We packed all my stuff into Josh’s minivan.  A guy (barely) under 40 without kids of his own driving a minivan?  If you saw the thing, it would make sense, and you wouldn’t make assumptions about his possible ill intentions or bad life choices 😉 It actually works quite well as a fishing vehicle.  In fact, when he did not arrive in the van for our camping trip with Brian in May, I was a little sad.  It has like 250 miles on the odometer, so it wisely does not move far from base camp.  Fortunately, Josh’s home base is rife with spring creeks and cold freestoners, many off the radar.  Our first stop was one such little-known gem, and it fished well.  Fish were small on average, but so was the creek.  It was like brookie fishing for browns.  We both appreciate wild brown trout creeks, however, because there is a chance to scare up an outsized fish once in a while.  The best fish today on this creek was my wide, mature 11-inch jigged bugger eater, but we both saw a massive fish roll on a falling bugger in one particular pocket.  Josh was like, What was that?  And I was like, Did you see what I think I saw?  It was so big I swore it was an errant rainbow, but with the high water, some of the browns today, including the big one I landed in the afternoon, had very pale bellies not buttery yellow ones.  Josh has tangled with fish to 18 inches in this creek, so he was less surprised than me, I bet.  Anyway, we caught a good number of beautiful little fish here before we ran out of unposted land and needed to make a move. 

Creek #1 fish.  Brookie fishing for browns.

Josh’s next choice was to show me his favorite creek, the one he hits for a few hours when he needs to get out, his home waters.  It is a really gorgeous creek with chalky limestone water and pretty trout.  I knew that before we arrived because he’d taken me here before and forgotten….  He gave me the option to fish another open section of the same crick, but I liked what I saw the first time I fished this place, so we saw this beat again for the first time.  Josh landed one nicer small stream wild brown, and we both landed a couple smalls, but we also had to contend with eager stocked rainbows here.  With midday upon us, the bite had changed too, with fish only tentatively taking the bugger or chasing it down and not eating.  Josh and I each made a couple fly changes after seeing what adult bugs were flying around—not a lot but enough to make an informed choice—but when nothing really developed, we abandoned this beat and decided that a bigger creek would be fishable.  

A nicer fish from creek 2# we fished again for the first time.

Creek number 3 was fishable, but it was also pretty damn high.  We’ve fished a different stretch of this creek together once when it was 100 CFS higher, so it was not a stupid choice by any means, especially with a guy who knows the crick like the back of his hand.  When I fish it alone, I like it at 250 CFS or under!  When it was 500 CFS, I struggled while Josh did well, due in no small part to that knowledge of the creek and what’s underneath.  On that morning last year, I had no clue what I was looking at most of the time.  Today, it was far easier to figure out the bite.  The challenge was really just wading into position to hit the likely high-water holding spots.  It was just a more physically demanding choice, basically.  But it was well worth the stop.  I mean, look at the piggy that opens this post.  This fish, and several seam buddies, took the dropper tag of my two-nymph rig right where you’d expect them to eat in high water.  They ate a size 16 nymph, an olive one even in this stained water, so I bet they had over 2 feet of visibility despite the sun lighting up all the particulates in the high water.  Besides the one big fish, we caught a lot of small wild boys and way too many hungry rainbows.  Some of them were healthy, full-finned 14 inch bows, so they were fun until they weren’t.  When you start out with a high teens wild brown, you are hoping for more or at least some mid-teen relatives or offspring.  

Bonus shot of the good one.

It was approaching late afternoon, and Josh was done, so he made a heroic crossing with rubber soles and no wading staff nearly parallel to our parked vehicles.  I picked a stout stick and tried to follow, but I am 56 and my day started at 3 AM, so I wisely turned back when I sensed that my studded boots were not going to hold when I got into the full waist deep current.  I took my time and back tracked to one of my original crossing points, and I think Josh thought he’d lost me.  He was packed up and ready to head home by the time I strolled back to the lot—dry and not physically taxed.  In fact, after we said our goodbyes, I decided to take a rest at a local park in the shade, eat a little something, drink my iced coffee, and fish one more creek before making the long drive home.  I did not choose another stretch of this big creek, nor did I choose another tiny one, but like Goldilocks, I suppose, I settled on one that was just right.  I have had some great days on this one, a medium limestoner.  It was still pushing a lot of water and stained, but wading was a pleasure compared to where I’d just parted ways with Josh.  

Solo tour on creek #4.

Fish were cooperative too.  No real bugs were present like I had hoped, not even as evening approached, but a soft hackle caddis on the dropper tag was the bug they wanted, so caddis have been around.  Bows get around, and so I caught a few rainbows here, unfortunately, but I also landed at least half a dozen more average wild browns in a short session.  I was hopeful that one of the 12 to 14 inchers I know from experience are in this particular stretch of creek would show himself, but I had to be content with 8-10 inch fish.  In pocket water with my 3 weight, I was still having a lot of fun late into my long day.  There was no use driving through rush hour in the Commonwealth’s capital city, so this fourth stop gave me a leisurely capstone to a productive day of fishing.  It was a perfect evening, too, with low humidity, dappled sunlight, and a little breeze.  I was home before 9:30 PM and in bed by 10:30 PM, dreading the 6:15 AM alarm clock but content from a nice, long, fishy weekend.

Parting shot.  June flows ought to remain awesome!