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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.
Chuck Scates the coast buster
If you want the skinny on shallow-water fishing in Texas, just ask Chuck Scates. Scates has been prowling the flats around Rockport for 24 years. He was one of the first fly-fishing guides in Texas – maybe the first. Scates will be doing seminars at Cabela's Fort Worth on Sept. 9-10. One thing he's learned after thousands of days on the water: A short, accurate cast beats a long cast that's not so accurate. "Redfish feed with their tails up and their heads down," Scates said. "We get very close to a lot of fish. The key is to put that fly right in front of the fish's nose. I tell customers to hit them in the head. If the fly isn't right next to the fish's face, you probably won't catch that fish." Scates' clients have a lot of days when they cast to 30 or more schools in water that's a foot deep or less.
Dunbar Creek survey brings surprise
Biologists from the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's regional office in Somerset surveyed the stream July 18-19, looking for wild and stocked trout. They found both in pretty good numbers. They also found something they weren't expecting. Electroshocking one section of stream, below what is known locally as the wire, they found eight hatchery brown trout and three hatchery brookies, but also four rainbow trout "that appeared to be either wild fish or fish that had been stocked as fingerlings, because they were all five to seven inches long," said the commission's area fisheries manager, Rick Lorson. .
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