Almost no one else calls it this, but the short creek flowing out of Children’s Lake in the hamlet of Boiling Springs is Boiling Springs Creek in my mind. I’ve been calling it this and fishing it since I was 10, so 49 years. It’s changed a lot since I was a kid. Way back when, it was mainly filled with brook trout, but in the autumn, big spawner trout would move in from Yellow Breeches, which attracted the attention of a lot of anglers. In those days, my dad and I would travel from Maryland with a group of guys from the old Maryland Fly Anglers of Annapolis (which morphed into Free State Fly Fishers). My dad was the only one of the group who fished for those little brook trout.
During my youth, the creek deteriorated substantially. The brush and woods in the area were cleared out for a gravel lot, and the township would move mountains of snow onto the gravel lot. The historic iron furnace was deteriorating with saplings growing out of the top, and its main use in those days was a place to take a squat.
I recall Ed Koch, author of Fishing the Midge and proprietor in those days of the Yellow Breeches Fly Shop, giving a presentation to Maryland Fly Anglers (of Annapolis) about the creek, the lake and the Breeches downstream from where the creek flows in. He talked of keeping aquariums filled with insects from the streams and watching them hatch out into his house. His wife must have been a saint.
Anyway, throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the stream and surrounding area got progressively more degraded. Each year it seemed like Breeches floods resulted in the creeks merging just a little farther upstream.
But Boiling Springs Creek is one of the places where I learned to fly fish. From the circus atmosphere of opening day, when a fleet of overcrowded rowboats surrounded the trout in the lake and the smell of barbecue, hot dogs and sauerkraut filled the air, through the frozen week between Christmas and New Years when we could use up the last few days of our fishing licenses, my dad and I fished it fairly regularly.
Typically his game plan – one that I’ve since adopted – was to pursue wild trout in the morning, from first light until the sun was on the water on the Letort, and then spend the late morning and early afternoon fishing for the easy trout over in Boiling Springs. The trout we caught in the Letort were always memorable because they were beautiful and hard to catch. The Boiling Springs fish made us feel better about our angling abilities because we caught so many.
An exception was during our wintertime end-of-license trips. Typically we would each catch a nice rainbow in the mid to high teen length range. For many years, these were the biggest trout I caught, and I still remember my hands being so cold that when I put them in the 55 degree water to release the fish, the creek seemed warm.
In the mid 1990s, kids came along. My fishing time was limited, so I focused on wild trout and an annual trip to fish for kings and steelhead on the Salmon River in Pulaski, New York. My visits to Boiling Springs pretty much stopped.
Then my son got to be of fishing age and I fell in with a group of fly fishers and bourbon drinkers from Brotherhood of the Jungle Cock (Maryland Chapter). I was shocked to learn many of them were largely unacquainted with the limestone region of Pennsylvania. I introduced those who were interested to the creeks, including Boiling Springs. Unfortunately, Boiling Springs Creek was a shadow of what it had been. The old dam on the Yellow Breeches just west of the town of Boiling Springs had washed out, so the millrace that had fed Breeches water into Children’s Lake essentially turned into a muddy ditch, and the creek’s flow was very low.
On the bright side, municipal lot where snow mountains had been piled was transformed into a nice little park. The iron furnace was turned into a historic site and people stopped pooping in it. The little anglers shelter was built. The backdrop was nicer, but there were fewer trout. Still, with more fishing time on my side, I was able to resume my Letort morning – Boiling Springs afternoon trips. My dad wasn’t able to fish by that time, but he was happy to hear the stream still had fish in it and the area around it was so much nicer.
When the Children’s Lake dam started failing a few years back, most of the water in the lake ended up being diverted to the even-shorter creek that runs from the millrace past the town swimming pool and into the Breeches. Boiling Springs Creek proper held very few trout. And the Breeches itself was in a sad state.
Even so, I was optimistic. I had run into the new Allenberry Resort owner and listened to his vision for the deteriorating property, as well as the historic fly section on the Breeches. Also, there were plans in place for restoring Children’s Lake.
A little diversion:
If you pick up a copy of “Limestone Legends, the Papers and Recollections of the Fly Fishers Club of Harrisburg, 1947 to 1997,” you can read an excerpt about what the creek was like in the era before the dam was built to create the lake (though there have been dams on the creek since the 1700s when the iron works were operational).
I can also add to that tale based on the cobwebbed memories of Ed Koch’s presentation. The irascible Mr. Koch (not to be confused with his contemporary former mayor of New York City) was very active in the local fishing clubs, including the one that established the cooperative hatchery a few miles outside town on Boiling Springs Road. According to my recollection of Ed Koch’s story, the original plan was to build pens for the cooperative hatchery on Boiling Springs Creek upstream from the lake. Problem was, the spring water has a tremendous amount of natural nitrogen in it. Fish spending more than a few days in the nitrogen-heavy water will develop pop-eye disease and die. You can see this happen each autumn when trout run up into the creek from the lake to spawn, and end up with bulging eyes.
This happened to the first batch of trout in the new co-op pens, so the club devised floating pens and anchored them in the upper part of the lake. Same problem. They kept moving them down, until they were on the lower part of the lake near the outflow. By then, the fish in the pens were fine, but feeding them and preventing poaching became big problems, so they ended up finding a different location for the co-op. My point here is pretty much that the creek, without the lake, wouldn’t provide much more in the way of fishable water. Also, the lake is so integral to the Boiling Springs community – each Christmas, the town Christmas tree is on a raft positioned in the upper part of the lake – that restoring the creek to what it was pre-iron works really isn’t an option.
There’s also the matter that in Mr. Koch’s day and before then, a stream heavily stocked with big hatchery fish was regarded as the gold standard for trout fishing, particularly along the Eastern Seaboard (that’s why the Fisherman’s Paradise in Centre County literally runs through a trout hatchery). It’s really only since the 1970s and beyond that a preference for well-managed wild trout has become the default preference. As evidenced by some of the back and forth on this board, there are a range of opinions about this ranging from restore all the brook trout and get rid of browns and rainbows on one extreme to let’s return to the good old days of streams heavily stocked with a variety of trout. Personally, while my preference is for wild trout – particularly wild brown trout – I enjoy hitting a stocked stream from time to time, and the occasional brook trout trip is usually part of my seasonal plan. Much as I enjoy the occasional brook trout trip, if all I could fish for was six-inch wild brookies in the few remaining streams where they thrive, I’d probably have to take up bass fishing in a more serious way (though, in these parts, bass are also invasive).
The point of my ramblings here is to say that, while I’ve heard, and have an appreciation for many of the critiques of the recently completed dam and creek restoration, I am very impressed with what I have seen so far.
On June 19, I fished Boiling Springs Creek and the Allenberry and I have a few observations to offer:
The restoration of the fly area of the Breeches at the Allenberry is impressive. In my youth, there were three or four reliable holes downstream from the dam, as well as the plunge pool below the dam. Last time I fished the section before the restoration, there was only the plunge pool and the other holes had silted in and held very few fish. Now all the old pools are restored with Stonehenge size blocks set in place in a way that appears to promote natural flushing of sand and gravel out of the pools. They were packed with trout, as was the relatively shallow section along the resort side, which had long ago washed out but has since been restored. It’s been decades since I caught fish along that once very productive shallow bank, and I’m glad to see it is once again a good spot. I had a lot of hits and a very productive day in the lower pools, landing several stocked rainbows and browns, as well as a single wild brown of about 7 inches.
There were plenty of trout cruising in the plunge pool just below the dam, though my only catch in there was a solid smallmouth (which I initially thought was a fairly large trout).
The waters above the dam seem to have a better flow to them, thanks to the partial dam breach. As usual, a few small flies were coming off and a few small fish were showing interest, and, of course, a few carp were cruising the backwaters. It was getting late, though, and I wanted to try my luck in the little creek, so I only made a few casts in the slow waters above the dam.
The work done at the mouth of Boiling Springs Creek has restored a few hundred feet of stream and added a very fishable pool. There were relatively few trout in the little creek, and it was clear from the chalky look of the bottom that a fair amount of silt washed down as a result of the restoration project. Still, in the fast and deep water below one of the V spillways on the creek, a very solid brown trout slammed the float I was using for nymphing. Go figure.
I continued my fairly thorough nymph casting up through the creek. Nothing.
At the bridge, I talked with a guy who has been fishing there as long as me, if not longer. He was very nice, but also irritated about how it used to be and seemed even more upset about the look of the restored areas of both the Breeches and the Allenberry.
Then I got up to the pool just above the footbridge and, after about 20 casts, hooked a wild brown of about 11 inches (photo taken without removing the fish from the water).
I continued fishing up to the outflow from Children’s Lake. That stupid pipe that used to run across the creek is gone, as is the bait hole just below the bridge-dam. This opens up another hole that was once of limited value. All in all, it looks like the creek is a little longer, with just a little bit more fishable water.
While I had no other hits, and saw no other fish in the little creek, I was very impressed with the section’s potential for holding fish.
It’s no Penns Creek, or Letort, and the restoration didn’t have the transformative effect of the one at Big Spring in terms of expanding habitat and fishing opportunities for wild trout. The new Boiling Springs Creek, however, is looking a lot better now than it has for most of my living memory. Likewise, it looks like the Allenberry section of the Breeches is in a state that will make it a wonderful destination for many years to come.
It’s not a place to catch wild trout in pristine habitat. It is an industrial site (iron works) in a heavily populated agricultural community that has been optimized to provide recreational fishing opportunities. It’s a great place to learn to fish, to learn to appreciate being in a pleasant outdoor space, to enjoy the camaraderie of fellow anglers, to teach young people how to fish, and to ease the pain of a morning of being skunked on the Letort.
Not everyone will share my enthusiasm for what’s been done, but I hope my ramblings inspire some pleasant thoughts about the future of our beloved sport.
