Home Forums Fishing Flyfishing Wild trout, tame countryside, good friends

Thanks for write up, Pugs. It was a bittersweet trip for me- I had fished those waters back in the "Glory Days" when you could walk across the creeks on the backs of brown trout, under the tutelage of guys like Ed Shenk, Charlie Fox, Vince Marinaro, and Ernie Schweibert. To see what the waters are like now after the PA Fish Commission campaigned to eradicate browns from those creeks that historically (hysterically?) were brookie fisheries was the bitter part of it. The sweet part of the equation was hanging with a couple of great guys who know their way around good beer.

I get the idea of reversion to traditional self sustaining brook trout fisheries. After all, the brookies were there first. But, the browns were what made them Meccas for fly fishing for over a century. There are those who say that the limestone creeks in the upper Cumberland Valley were the birthplace of fly fishing in America as we know it. I'm not 100% sure that the honor belongs there or in the Catskills, but I'm here to tell you that what I witnessed at the tail end of the Golden Era there has me leaning toward the former.

In a conversation with Ernie Scweibert almost 30 years ago he warned me that if the Fish Commission had their way it would wreck the Garden of Eden. I chuckled, thinking it could never change. How foolish of me.

I'm sorely tempted to sneak in under cover of darkness and deposit a barrel full of browns into Big Spring Creek, and wait for the magic to build. Might have to "dissuade" the electroshock-armed Fish Commission "race cleansers" from their duty after that though...