Angling Publications - Index

Angling Publications - may2008 - Index

BOB HESSE PHOTOS
Some parts of the country conjure up the roots of fly fishing.
The Catskills is one such area, made famous by notables like Art Flick, Roy
Steenrod, Hoagy Carmichael, Charles Ritz and Esquire magazine’s Arnold
Gingrech. Michigan—with Hemingway, then the 1959 formation of Trout
Unlimited, and in the 1970s the dynamic duo of Doug Swisher and Carl
Richards—is another. A fly fishing retrospective would not be complete,
however, if we overlooked Pennsylvania’s significant contributions.
There is a hollow tucked in the Nittany Mountain range. Sure, there’s
Joe Paterno and Penn State football, but there’s a whole lot more as well.
To a fly angler, this part of central Pennsylvania offers the streams, rivers,
hatches and trout that nurtured the masters of fly fishing before it was as
it is today. These personalities have grown into legends, and are part of
the foundation of our sport. Think about it: Vince Marinaro, author of
the Modern Dry Fly Code, lived, fished, and wrote there. So did Field and
Stream’s Jim Bashline. And the late George Harvey. And Joe Humphries.
And Ed Koch. Ernie Schwiebert lived across the boarder in Princeton,
New Jersey, but he fished there so often he was considered among locals
to be a resident. That’s just scratching the surface, and if you dig a little
deeper you’ll find that the list is seemingly endless.
Residents know why central Pennsylvania is so famous: Spring creeks.
There are many of them, bubbling out of the ground, running through
limestone to create an aquatic habitat that is nearly perfect. The rivers don’t
freeze with anchor ice in the winter, they don’t overheat in the summer,
and they are so clean that you’ll find abundant mayfly hatches, whereas
neighboring states with less clean water offer only caddis and stoneflies.
One reason to go to central Pennsylvania is to target a specific hatch
that you’ve never fished before. There are classic mayfly hatches, like
the early season blue quills, quill Gordons, March browns, grey foxes,
Hendricksons and red quills. Later on in the season you’ll find drakes,
light Cahills, sulphers, blue-winged olives, Isonychias and tricos, too.
Sure, you’ll find the requisite caddis in black, brown, green, tan, but you’ll
also find Grannom’s, a hatch I’ve never had the opportunity to fish. In
many Eastern trout streams, terrestrial fishing is more of a prospecting
style. Here in central Pennsylvania lies the reason that Ed Koch wrote a
book on terrestrials. In the summer you’ll find ants, flying ants, beetles
and hoppers. This year, many anglers (myself included) are interested in
the once-every-17-year cicadas hatch. If you’re looking for a hatch to fish
and to schedule a trip around it, it’s almost easier to ask which hatches
are NOT common to this area. That list is more manageable.
Other anglers pick a body of water they’ve always wanted to fish.
You can go about it in a generic way, as in “I’ve always wanted to fish
a limestone spring creek.” But you can also select a river that has name
recognition, as in “I’ve always wanted to fish Fishing Creek, Spruce
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