Penns Creek

The river

Penns Creek cuts through a limestone valley in central Pennsylvania, which gives it the alkalinity to grow big mayflies and big brown trout. The Green Drake hatch in late May brings anglers from several states for about eight days. The rest of the year it is a solid, unglamorous freestone river with good caddis fishing and a serious brown trout population in the catch-and-release stretch above Weikert.

On this river

Drake week planning

The hatch is not a single night: it builds over about eight days, with the biggest flights from the third to the sixth. Fish the dusk emergence with a cripple, then return at dawn for the spinner fall. Anglers who only fish one of the two sessions catch a fraction of what the river offers in that week.

Fishing the spinner fall

Dawn spinner falls happen in water you fished the night before, but the fish are in different places — drifting spinners collect in the slow tails and inside seams. Use a spent-wing pattern, cast to individual fish, and keep the fly in the film rather than on the surface; a drake spinner sits flush with the meniscus.

The rest of the year

For eleven months Penns is a caddis and nymph river. Fish a two-nymph rig with a bead-head Pheasant Tail on the point through the fast chutes, and in October switch to olive dries in the flat water below Coburn. The browns here average 25 to 35 cm, with a real chance of a 45 cm fish in the catch-and-release reach.