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Catching muskies is challenging
If Ohio has an ultimate game fish, that fish would have to be the muskie. They reach sizes of 50-plus pounds, fight ferociously and are temperamental and unpredictable enough to make catching them a challenge comparable to enticing an eight-pound brown trout with a fly. August can be a tough month to find one, especially if anglers use the same tactics they used in May and June. But even though they might seem to have lockjaw, the water is hot and their metabolism high, so they're eating a lot of forage fish now, and maybe a fishing lure too, if you present it right. .
Fishing: Creek cleanup will not happen overnight
Fifty years ago, Green Drakes disappeared from Spring Creek in Centre County after someone from a Penn State University chemistry lab dumped cyanide into the water. The big mayflies haven't been seen there since. "A bunch of us tried to reintroduce them by planting nymphs in the stream and duns in the foliage," said Dan Shields, of Lamont, Pa., who wrote about the incident in his book "Fly Fishing Pennsylvania's Spring Creek." "We even netted thousands of spinners from another stream, but they never took hold. We tried for three or four years, but it was no use." Although the recent train derailment and chemical spill on Sinnemahoning Portage Creek in Mc-Kean and Cameron counties was much bigger and more deadly, experts are cautiously optimistic that insects will rebound on what had been pristine, wild trout water, but predict a long, slow process.
GIANT SEQUOIAS, NO CROWDS
The groves of massive giant sequoias and nearby array of towering granite pinnacles make Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park one of the world's greatest showpieces. Yet, because of the long, circuitous route to get there for almost everybody, it gets a fraction of the visitors who go to Yosemite. Once school starts, and in turn, the fall season in September and October, the numbers drop yet further. I've seen fall mornings there where I even had the Grant Grove all to myself for the half-mile loop walk, and later, the Kings River was like my personal fly-fishing stream. Here are the best of lodging, camping, driving tours, easy hikes, cave tours and fly fishing: Grant Grove: Of the several groves of giant sequoias, the Grant Grove may be the most sensational and easy to reach, with an easy half-mile loop hiking trail that meanders amid the giants.
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