A tempting Limestone Spring Creek & the One that Got Away

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Spectorfly and I hit 4 streams Friday and 2 of them werent any good to say. Of the two that werent any good 1 lacked holding water and wasent a true limestoner and the other is heavily posted. The posted one I had been to before, but in the upper section and got granted access via a farmer. I would say 90 percent of this stream is posted. Everytime a bridge crossed the road we would look over it and wild rainbows would scatter. Its good to see the resource doing well and sad to see a waste of a trout stream.
The First stream we visited though was a wonderful limestone spring creek that is channelized through most of its course. The stream is fairly deep and has ALOT of weed in it. Here is the channelized section:

under the bridge
channelized
around the bend
here you can see how far its channelized
look at them weeds
choked with them
beautiful
otherside of bridge
pretty
the stream is on the natural reproduction list and i think has brrok trout. we couldnt move a fish through that section.

then upstream the stream runs through a small wooded section. THIS SECTION IS SO BEAUTIFUL. with its beauty comes a variety of problems. trees being the main one and pheasants being the second one. we spooked about 20 pheasants through this section and thats not an exaggeration. they would fly over the stream them land right beside the stream again. Kinda frustrating when you crawl low up to the stream....attempt to cast through 50 trees and BOOM a pheasant takes off spooking all the fish. Bad as ducks(that i dunno) :lol: BUT in this section we did see a few trout and have a few takes. I think we would have seen more but this water is sooooooo clear the fish had to have seen us coming.
i should have takin more pictures of this section cause it was so pretty:
just before the woods
in the woods
in the woods2
in the woods 3

then after the woods is a dam just down from the headwaters. i would say that most dams are bad but maybe this one isnt. the water is probably still cold and it makes one heck of a nice hole after it
dam
upstream of dam
downstream of dam
headwaters channelized

so all in all we didnt catch a trout but this stream has massive potential and is no doubt better than it showed us. But the funny part of this story.
we headed downstream where it runs into a lake. there is a railroad bridge down there with a nice hole under it. we couldnt access the hole from the side we were on so we walked up to the railroad and looked over the other side before crossing. A large fish ran and i mean ran into the lake from just under the bridge. The stream enters the lake and puts its mark on it with weeds on both sides of its flow into the lake. The fish went right for those weeds and was hiding, We couldnt tell what kind of fish it was but it sure was fast so i was voting trout as was spectorfly. then we looked under the bridge and spooked another large fish upstream this time. When we got to the other side of the bridge again there he was. This really large "blue" fish. this fish was about 25-27 inches long. we sat there and fought about what kind of fish it was. He voted largemouth and i voted ....well nothing...i never seen a blue fish. i told him i seen largemouth bass that look green with that black stripe in the water. not like this fish. well i started throwing at it and had it take a wolley bugger and the fight was on! here i pulled up the rod and made it come closer to the top. sure enough spectorfly was right. it was a HUGE largemouth. i would guess in the 5-6 lb range. anyways it ran me back under the bridge and took out alot of line. he was obviously trying to get back to the lake. i reeled him the whole way back through and almost had the fish in hand and then.....the hook let go :lol:
it was by far the biggest largemouth i ever saw besides the ones in my old pond. they are the same size as him. went brook trout fishing and almost won the bass master classic! :-D

finally stream 4 was the tully in the open water. nothing much to report here except spectorfly nailin them on a white wolley bugger. he caught i think 6 fish in about 30 minutes. hes a tully master. :lol:
BUT SPEAKING OF HERONS. in the 30 minutes we were there i saw 8 herons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and two of them were fishing together. they are supposed to be territoria. but i think there are so many of them they are running out of land to have as there own and are becoming over populated. give me a shotgun and ill fix it.all i can say is endangered my butt. it should be open season on these things! :-D
herons
herons2

 

[longbow64]

sounds very interesting. I have also seen lm that color, but just on occasion. We apparently fish the same stretch of lititz run. Did very weel last sun. a.m. Going again tomarrow. Those limeys sound productive with better water, and milder air temp. well, good luck

 

[Fredrick]

BUT SPEAKING OF HERONS. in the 30 minutes we were there i saw 8 herons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and two of them were fishing together. they are supposed to be territoria. but i think there are so many of them they are running out of land to have as there own and are becoming over populated. give me a shotgun and ill fix it.all i can say is endangered my butt. it should be open season on these things!

I looked on the National fish and wildlife site and they are not on there so there not protect by the government well at least not the Federal one, maybe state. But they are getting to populated I see them on the streams more than ducks these days and they are loaded on all stocked streams for the easy pickins yes they have the right to live and do there natural thing but so do Deer :-o . Imagine how many trout these birds eat in a year alone just on the Tully :-o

 

[tomgamber]

I know that place very well. That bridge is where I learned to cast. Would cast thru it to the light on other end and just listen for the take as the fly drifted into the darkness. That keyhole at the top has always been over grown like that. Used to be some big brookies in there. I was just telling albatross about that place while we were fishing today.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Tom,
when you asked me if i explored that area yet i said no but it was on my list. well i moved it up after talking to you figuring there must be a nice stream up there. this stream is really nice and im heading back to fish it again alone and very stealthy this time. im thinking it has to be alot better than it showed me. it is class a anyways :-D
it is a beautiful stream but a shame it is channelized. althought it made it easier to fish and the stream deeper. i imagine that in dry fly season that whole stretch is a joy to fish.
Maybe when i go back this time i will wion the bass master classic! :-D

 

[tomgamber]

In the the spring there used to be these green crickets that they would go nuts for. The better fishing is from the lake side of the bridge, upstream thru and under the bridge. That little falls usually hold a few. Its been walled in probably because that is the city's water supply and its easier to maintain that way. There is used to always be people fishing the bank of the lake where it dumps in because of the inflow of cold water. If you fish the creek and stay low and fish dries along the wall on your side (using the wall to hide behind) you should do well. If you follow the road that goes below the dam you can catch the occasional trout in the creeks below the dam but its mostly smallmouth bass and the occasional musky. I'll PM you the other stream near there to try. Remember I have not been there since I left for college 20 years ago.

 

[mute]

Awesome report, love it

 

[flyfish10]

that picture of the headwaters of that stream is really neat. i personally haven't seen anything like that before. it's cool how the stream starts from that hole. i was wondering why alot of the stream is channelized though?

 

[tomgamber]

flyfish10 wrote:
that picture of the headwaters of that stream is really neat. i personally haven't seen anything like that before. it's cool how the stream starts from that hole. i was wondering why alot of the stream is channelized though?

Roads, bridges, infrastructure...oh, and ignorance.

 

[JoelD]

FlyFish10 - Go to headwaters of Big Spring or Falling Spring... they just kinda pop out of the side of a small hill. Pretty neat.

Sal, another great post and report... i envy you living so close to so many spring creeks. I started fishing them 2 years ago for the first time and totally fell in love with them. I have to admit i cant fish them for sh!t yet but they are fantastic.