On Saturday I had a short window of time to fish so I decided to stay close to home. I used the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission’s iPhone app to look at their list of the best-stocked trout fishing waters in the southeastern part of the state. I found a small creek located in York County called the East Branch Codorus Creek. I’d heard of this creek’s parent body of water, the Codorus Creek located just below Codorus State Park, but I was not aware that there were other branches. I did some research on Google Maps and was able to determine an access point at the start of the state stocked portion of the creek. This access point was located in the Spring Valley County Park off of Potosi Road. As I was searching Google I found that Spring Valley Park was previously known as Rehmeyer Hollow. This was the site of the infamous Hex Murder from the late 1920’s. After reading the back story it kind of creeped me out to think about fishing here alone. The “Hex House,” which was the site of the cult murder of Nelson Rehmeyer, still stands today and if you decide to fly fish the East Branch Codorus Creek, you’ll drive right by it.
Read moreQuality Not Quantity On Harveys Creek
This was the first week this year that it felt like summer. Last weekend I was on my annual fly fishing trip to Pine Creek with college friends and the air temperatures hit 95 degrees on Sunday afternoon. That heat continued throughout the first few days of this week and the water temperatures in Pennsylvania continue to steadily rise. It wont’ be long before I’ll start venturing out to warm water locations with my 9’-7wt looking for smallmouth bass on streamers. However, today I continued my quest for trout on Keystone Select stream. I headed north to fish Harveys Creek.
Read moreDonegal Creek, Adventure Right In My Backyard
I like adventure. I like fly fishing. I like to explore new bodies of water, small towns, states I’ve never visited. I like driving in the middle of the night to some destination I’ve never been to. Ironically, with all the exciting experiences I’ve pursued, there are still places close to home I know little about. One of these places is the Donegal Creek in western Lancaster County. I grew up in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and the Donegal Creek was just a short drive from my home. Friends and I would frequently fishing the all tackle water off of Rt. 772 during the spring trout season, dunking worms or PowerBait® on spin rods. We would often walk down to the boundary where the fly fishing only section of the stream started and that’s where we’d end our day. For years I’ve known there was a fly fishing only section on the Donegal Creek. I’d met many fishermen who’d tell me about it, I had friends that would fish it regularly, but I never visited. That is until May 29th, 2017 on Memorial Day.
Read moreThe Brown Trout Buffet On Ninemile Creek
Heading into Memorial Day weekend I had my sites set on traveling across the border into Canada to fly fish the Grand River. I had all my planning done and was ready to roll and then Friday afternoon I called Grand River Outfitting & Fly Shop. I found out that water levels on the Grand River had been raised due to high water in the reservoir and in five minutes my weekend plans had to change. Fortunately I had a Plan B ready to put into action. Plan B consisted to heading to New York to fish Ninemile Creek, just east of Syracuse. Ninemile Creek is a 22-mile tailwater that begins at the Otisco Lake and runs east to the Onondaga Lake. Within these 22 miles of water, there are approximately 5 miles of accessible water with Public Fishing Rights (“PFR’s”). The stream intrigued me because it has a wild population of brown and brook trout, but is also heavily stocked by the Carpenter Brook Fish Hatchery. This hatchery puts a lot of fish in the river. I’ve read numbers from 18,000, all the way up to 24,000 annually. I figured if I headed here there was a good chance I could get into some fish.
Read more