Penns Creek Angler

Bruce Fisher

Article August 2008

Be prepared, Part #1.

Nothing could more true than having the right equipment and flies while fishing Penns Creek. So many times I’ve watched people come off the creek at night shaking their heads. I hear things like there were 10 trout in the pool I was fishing and I couldn’t get a strike. They say they tried every fly in their box but nothing would work. Penns Creek has a way of doing this to anglers old and young. The insect diversity in Penns Creek is so complex it amazes entomologists all over the United States and anglers that have fished the creek their whole lives. On most days there are several different hatches occurring at the same time. This is when fishermen can have difficulty determining exactly what the trout are eating. To make matters more complicated there are many stages of an insect’s life. The most important are the nymph, emerger, dun, crippled dun and spinner stages. If you sit and watch a particular fish it may be taking any stage or variety of fly that is hatching. Every fish is different and on a stream like Penns where there’s so much food one fish may be taking Sulphurs while another might be taking Light Cahill’s and yet another could be taking something totally different. Lets go over the stages of the insect’s life and see what form is the easiest to capture. First we have the nymph that is helpless when dislodged from the place it lives, usually under a rock or in the mud. A trout is always on the lookout for a nymph that is floating down the creek because it’s an easy meal to capture. The trout simply comes out from its holding area and sucks the nymph in its mouth. The emerger is just as easy for the trout to capture because it’s in the transition from nymph to a dun. This is the process where the nymph swims to the surface breaks the surface film and sheds it nymph shuck and turns into a dun. These emergers are momentarily stuck in the surface film providing an easy meal for the trout. This process can be as quick as a second and as take as long as a few minutes. The dun is another matter some are quick to escape from the waters surface and others are very slow to get air born. I believe this mostly has to due with the water temperature and how quickly the fly can get its wings dry. In the case of the Hendrickson the dun may float for minutes before it can fly from the water. A crippled dun is a fully emerged dun that has somehow become stuck in the surface film. You will see many of these flies at the bottom of a heavy riffle where the white water stops and a slow pool begins. What I think happens is the dun is in the process of drying its wings and gets washed over by the rough currents. Once the dun’s wings are stuck to the waters surface these flies never make it out of the water. The trout know this and feed on them sometimes to the exclusion of the normal duns that surround it. Another aspect of the crippled dun is a fly that could not make it out of its nymph form and complete the process of becoming a dun. You will see both the dun’s body and the exoskeleton of the nymph stuck together in this type of fly. The crippled dun is one of the best flies to fish! The spinner is simply the easiest meal to capture because it is dead or very close to death. These spent flies cover the water and the trout simply wait for them to come to them. In part 2 of this article I’ll share some of what I think the answers are about being prepared and having the right equipment. But for now I’ll leave you with some thoughts. There is a hierarchy among trout and the larger fish take over the primes feeding zones. It’s the big trout that get to choose where and what it wants to eat. The fish that grow the largest expend the least amount of energy while gathering their food.