The Road Less Traveled

"Not all who wander are lost". Those perceptive words are more than just the title of a popular newgrass album by Nickel Creek's virtuoso mandolin player Chris Thile, or an extracted snippet from a popular classic English novelist, poet and philologist. They have become the modern day mantra for those of us who, either by accident or design, possess a certain degree of wanderlust and self-sufficiency as well as the ability to enjoy our own company in remote wild places.

Be it busted ball joints, broken axles or sopping wet bentonite clays, if your a traveling fly fisherperson in pursuit of some of the worlds most remote indigenous salmonoid populations you already know the feeling all too well. Only 55 more miles of washboard roads left yet to go. Then another 20 more on horseback. You pray that one of those pyramid shaped rocks in the middle of a jeep trail (it would be misleading to call it a road) deep in the Bridger-Tetons doesn't come loose and puncture a hole in the oil pan even though your top speed has only been 5 mph for the last hour or so.


If you have a little bit of savvy and you've done your homework well (a little bit of luck doesn't hurt either) the trout will be there waiting for you. They'll be good trout too. No deformed mandibles here, just remote seldom seen trailheads packing hordes of mosquitoes along with large, unpredictable, nomadic, mega-fauna. All of us players trapped together briefly in a net of life and time.


And after the rise is finally over you may even start to notice the scenery around you. Chances are very good that scenery will be devoid of other anglers, but your spirit will be filled with the satisfaction of having pushed both yourself and your equipment to their respective limits. Paradise found on our tiny blue planet.

Armstrong Spring Creek

Armstrong Spring Creek

The Last of My Armstrong Spring Mosquito Bites

The last of my Armstrong Spring mosquito bites fade quickly from my body like the end of a movie leaving the screen.

I'm here on the California coast. It's foggy. The Pacific crashes. I'm far away from that beautiful little creek outside of Livingston, Montana, where the sunset echoed off the mountains to remain in my eyes longer than it's existence.

I could still see the sunset after it was gone.

The mosquitoes bit the hell out of me a few evenings ago while I explored a hatch of May flies like an astronomer but instead of discovering a new comet, I hooked a good German brown trout on my rod.

I lost him but I didn't feel bad because I've come to know that there isn't enough space in your life to keep everything.

You'd run out of room.

Goodbye, mosquito bites.

-Richard Brautigan
The Tokyo-Montana Express

Sunset Over the Gallatin Range

Moonrise Over the Absarokas

All Saints Day Brown Trout

Elk Creek

All Saints Day. It is with bittersweet regret that we report on the last trip of an otherwise fruitful fishing season here in central Pennsylvania. The days are growing shorter, mayfly hatches are waning and the trout will soon be paired up on their reds doing their part in ensuring the future progeny of wild trout stocks. No active spawners were observed this weekend but that should change very shortly here in these parts.

Darkness comes early on a late October day and the fishing day runs a little on the short side. Still I just had to squeeze in a couple more days on one of my favorite central Pennsylvania small streams before the onset of the spawn and colder water temperatures turn the fish into slackers.

The prevailing weather for the weekend was dominated by a cold front that swept across the state on Saturday with warm (65F), gloomy, rainy skies giving way to cooler temps (52F) and bright bluebird conditions on Sunday. On Saturday the water temperature was 52F at 1400hrs.

As any fly fisherman would imagine, there were excellent numbers of Baetis mayflies coming off the water under such gloomy skies but the creek was just pushing too much water for these fish to be rising to such minute fare. The real surprise was the number of size #16 caddis coming off along with the Baetis. I've seen a few sporadic caddis this late in the season before but not in these numbers. They're both irrelevant however since the creek is up from recent rains in the watershed and naked nymphing was the reason I was here in the first place.

Elk Creek Brown Trout

And if there's anything I love it's nymphing these productive limestoners when the flows are slightly elevated and limestone green from recent rains. By running some of the biggest, baddest, bad-assed beadheaded nymphs in my fly box, skillfully tied by and generously given to me by my good friend and fly tying & fishing genius, Greg Glitzer of Doylestown, Pa., through some of the deeper pockets and runs I was lucky enough to score a passel of wild browns from the finicky creek and close out the season on a high note.

Sure, Montana and Wyoming have some fine fishing alright, but we grow some pretty nice fish back home here too. Lousy shot of a beautiful fish.

Spring Bank Run

A tributary to a tributary of Penns Creek. Even during the dryest of summers you can bank on a good solid flow of cool, hatchery effluent laden, liquid manure carrying, limestone spring water. And I'm only half kidding; the flow really isn't all that solid.

Millheim Narrows

Don't even think about trying something like this at home. I'm a highly trained & paid professional. In fact, I'd like to see Mr. Big Shot fly fishing photographer Barry Beck himself try a self portrait, on-stream shot like this without Cathy to carry his camera bags around for him. So to speak...

Despite the ongoing problems in the watershed with agricultural runoff, fish hatchery effluent and drought, etc., I experienced some spectacular fall fishing on a glorious weekend as the above photos will attest. Now it's time to give the fish a well deserved break for a few months. There may be the odd trip here or there during the winter Chinook but, by and by, the only trout I will see over the next couple of months will be the ones in my dreams. At least until I hear those spring Baetis tricaudatus mayfly nymphs stirring in their little shucks come March.

Brush Valley

On the way home. Traveling east on Samuel Miles Great Road (PA 192) through the Brush Valley we eventually come to the spot where the parallel ridges of Nittany and Shriner Mountains which bookend the wide fertile valley neck down to form the gap at R.B. Winter State Park.

R.B. Winter State Park

That tiny blue speck in the center of the shallow basin in the above image is Halfway Lake in R.B.Winter State Park. This exposure was a lot tougher than it looks. Had to use a Galen Rowell 3-stop hard GND filter to hold back the brighter sky from being blown out while correctly exposing for the darker trees. I seriously doubt if Galen ever visited R.B. Winter so someone had to snag this one.

Rapid Run

Rapid Run is the stream that issues forth from Halfway Lake Dam and flows east to join the Susquehanna River. It's listed as a stocked cold water something or other by the PFBC.