Joe, the fishing was bad. Saturday afternoon we went to one of the local streams that usually has a good number of trout and quickly found out that there were only two holes on the stretch that had any trout in them and there were a bunch of guys fishing there. I ended up catching a 17" smallmouth bass. Yesterday we hit up a stream that I had never fished before. We got there and I couldn't believe how small it was, I cast out into the only hole and hooked up on a fish. I ended up pulling out a 16" Native Brown trout. I wish I had taken my camera as it was one of the most beautiful fish that I have caught. Well, we fished a little further and didn't have any luck. When we went to leave we drove down the road a little ways and came upon a bigger stream. Turns out the little stream we originally fished was just a tiny feeder stream into the stocked stream. We ended up fishing the actual stream and didn't have any luck at all. The trout fishing in PA is getting worse every year. We are being told that they are stocking "bigger but fewer" trout. Problem is I havn't seen any dramatic increase in fish size to make up for the drastic reduction of fish. Float stocking is all but gone on the streams around here so you are only going to have a few holes that have trout in them and they are usually hammered by guys the first week or two of season.
BM Sad to say, but the "good" trout fishing is getting pushed to the suburbs. Back in the day I used to drive miles & miles past many streams to hit the waters up your way cause the fishing was great. Now with the amount of fish they dump in these streams around here, there's no point in me driving far to fish. They are still dumping good numbers and decent sized fish around here. And yea there are more crowds, but they too dissapate after the 1st couple weeks. But as time goes on, I'm getting less enthralled with the put & take fishing experience. Yea I'll hit these streams cause they are here, but now after fishing the yough a few times...I'll make the drive. Maybe fish a few times less, but in my eyes the quality goes up. Let me know if you ever want to take an adventure down there.
