As the club banquet approaches, I wanted to share my experience with an item I won last year. Specifically, thanks to guide Mike Heck’s (fallingsprings.com) generosity, I was able to enjoy a half day fishing trip in Pennsylvania. We originally had planned to fish Yellow Breeches but, given how busy it was, decided to move to Mountain Creek to fish for native brook trout.
Despite the hot weather, I was able to catch a nice brookie, who greedily grabbed a stimulator that I had floated along the nicely shaded bank. After I landed it and admired its beauty and feistiness, I moved up the stream further. I found a nice little pool that was behind a fallen tree and tried to approach it from downstream. However, it was fairly impenetrable, at least for me, from that position so I moved upstream and began to make offering downstream. A brookie was definitely interested, rising as I offered a number of dry flies such as hoppers and Royal Wulffs, but was not quite interested enough to take one, regardless of size.
This experience, along with the fun I had with brookies at Morgan Run earlier this year, has rekindled the love for brook trout fishing I had as a child growing up in the Adirondack foothills; my first brookie (that I remember) was caught with a worm on a Zebco when I was about five.
These recent experiences have also left me with a strong desire to fish for brookies more often and with increased skill. Thus, I would be interested if anyone would like to lead or join me for a brook trout focused outing. As part of my effort to educate myself, I have been reading Harry Murray’s Trout Fishing in the Shenandoah National Park.
I also will be attending a mountain trout fly fishing school through his fly fishing shop in Edinburg.
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to join me; I will be attending the May 9, 2022, session.
—Mike Holland
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