Fished the upper public section of spruce this past autumn for the first time in my 60 years on the way to the Juniata.
Maybe it’s because I’ve read so much about it over the decades and was bound to be disappointed. But I was disappointed.
Got one 9 incher wild looking brown on about my 10th cast. Then about a half dozen guys pulled in, hopped into the creek and started what I think they believed was “fishing.” They left after walking through the entire section.
There’s a big pool with a bunch of stockers in it, and when they settled down, my cousin got a solid hatchery brown.
We left unimpressed.
It seemed to me to be like one of the fly only trophy trout spots from the 1970s and’80s: masses of stockers that were as used to people as zoo animals, and swarms of anglers.
It was not the sublime experience I was expecting.
Since this reads like a restaurant review on yelp, I give it a 1 star rating.
Maybe if I lived closer and had more opportunities to fish it, I’d have a different opinion. To my way of thinking Penns, letort, falling springs, big spring and several others that are open to the public and managed for wild trout are far superior.
It’s going to take a lot more than opening up a short half section to turn a paradise for stocked trout into something half as good as big gunpowder in Maryland.
That said, the public has a right to fish on public property.
