I arrived at a bridge and got out to look at the water. Sure enough, as I descended a long road down toward the creek, I could see that Chest Creek was frozen. The evening before when I’d researched Chest Creek, it hadn’t occurred to me that the overnight temperatures in Cambria County had been consistently low enough that creeks might freeze over. As my GPS signaled I was getting closer to my final destination, I noticed the amount of snow on the ground was more than what I’d encountered just south along Rt. It took just over three hours to make it to the small town of Patton. On Saturday morning I found myself up before first light driving toward Cambria County, Pennsylvania to fly fish Chest Creek for the first time. After listening I made the decision I was going to explore Ohio over the weekend. In the podcast I came across he was talking with Dan Pribanic of Chagrin River Outfitters. Each year Rob spends time fly fishing for steelhead in Ohio. He’s got a lot of great content posted online that can fill long hours travelling to fishing destinations. If you love to fly fish and you’ve never checked out Rob’s podcasts, I’d suggest you do. Somewhere in the middle of all my internet surfing I came across a podcast by Washington D.C. By Friday, folks were posting videos from Walnut and Elk Creek on YouTube and Instagram and sure enough, fresh fish were being caught. I heard reports that there were still a good number of fresh steelhead staged in the lake prior to the wet weather and all I could think about was how many of these fish were moving upstream. Thursday morning, Lake Erie tributaries on “Steelhead Alley” were all blown out. A large weather system moved across the Mid-Atlantic Tuesday night through Wednesday and it put a lot of creeks over their banks. The itch to chase spring run steelhead trout hit me about the middle of last week. This can be a painstaking process and as you’ll read later, just because water looks accessible on a map, does not mean it is easily accessible. I’ve taken this list and started to cross-reference it with maps of state game and forestland in an effort to find public access to wild trout water. If it is not and you are able to locate the owner, then you can ask for permission. You’ll need to first determine that the stream is publicly accessible. You cannot find a stream on this list, locate its physical location and fish it. One thing that is important to note is that many of those streams are not public. No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of wild trout water. This list is over 100 pages long and each page has over 40 bodies of water listed. You can find this list by quickly typing “PA Wild Trout Water List” in Google, and you’ll find a PDF that is kept updated by the agency. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission maintains an annual list of wild trout waters where natural reproduction is occurring. One thing is for sure, the Keystone State is not lacking for opportunities to catch wild trout. A week ago I decided to give everyone what they’ve been asking for, a series of content focused on wild trout in Pennsylvania. Read More →įor several months now subscribers to my blog and YouTube channel have been asking me to do more wild trout fishing. I headed off to bed early and set my alarm for 3:30AM. This stream was rated Class A and was easily accessible off of 7thAvenue. I decided I’d head here first but then found a back-up stream further north called Vineyard Run. The southern most tributary that is surveyed for wild trout is Jenkins Run. The brook trout streams in this area are tributaries to the Little Toby Creek. I focused on State Game Lands 44 and 54, which are located in Jefferson and Elk Counties. I wanted to stay as far south as I could to limit driving time. And so Friday evening I decided I’d chase wild brook trout on Saturday. Deciding to go there this weekend ended up being less about a choice and more about necessity. This giant green area on Google Maps has been in my travel plans for a long time. I studied the storms as they moved across the state and I noticed that a majority of the weather systems were moving south of the Allegheny National Forest. Going into Friday I knew it was going to be impossible to find anywhere that was fishing well for the weekend. After flooding last week, the streams of central and eastern Pennsylvania desperately needed a break.
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