Transcript: Central Pennsylvania Fishing Report with TCO Fly Shop State College
S5, Ep 139: Central Pennsylvania Fishing Report with TCO Fly Shop
2023, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
http://www.thearticulatefly.com
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly, and we're back with another Central PA Fisher & Port with George Kost of TCO Fly Shop in State College. How are you doing, George?
George:
[0:14] I am amazing as always, Marv. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:17] I'm living the dream, and I hope you are.
George:
[0:21] Yes, a waking nightmare or a dream. It could be either way. It's all great. It's all good.
Marvin:
[0:25] Yeah, but you've got to be happy. You're decorating the store Christmas tree today.
George:
[0:28] It is? Christmas tree not quite yet another week or two, but we definitely got some Christmas time ornaments and stuff getting ready for the holiday shopping extravaganza and breeze.
Going to be a good one.
Marvin:
[0:41] Yeah, and I looked at your weather and you're getting ready to get cold around Thanksgiving, but what are you seeing on the trout in the steelhead water?
George:
[0:48] Um, yeah, well, the temperatures are starting to drop next week.
We got a little warm bump today.
Tomorrow we're supposed to get a little bit of rain tomorrow night here locally.
We'll see how much right now they're calling for maybe up to a quarter, half inch, which would be nice and welcome because everything here is pretty low, really clear.
Trout wise, it's a heavy spawn right now. There's a lot of fish on reds, all of our streams, there's a lot of fish spawning.
So really be mindful of where you're fishing and what trout you're fishing to.
We've spotted some big ones in the past week or so because they come out of the woodworks and suddenly a place where You couldn't catch a trout all year.
You're seeing 18, 20 inch fish, you know, in six inches of water doing their thing, but try to leave those fish alone.
Um, dry wise, we've still got some midges and there have been some olive sporadic here and there, and there's fish on top of them on those cloudy days.
Um, nymphing has been really good and consistent with smaller beta snimps, small pertigon patterns and things like that. And of course the streamer bites good, but just, you know, try not to snag anything in the fin.
Um, so locally the fishing has been pretty steady, but you know, laying off a little bit just because it is heavy spawn.
Marvin:
[1:56] Yeah so time for your blackberry brandy right?
George:
[2:00] Exactly, it's Blackberry Brandy time, let's all get wasted and go fish in steelhead because that's been pretty good.
Marvin:
[2:06] Yeah, I was just getting ready to say you were saying not only you were a little greedy, you weren't happy enough with Erie PA, you had to go to New York too.
George:
[2:12] Exactly, so yeah, steelhead fishing has been pretty good, but all the streams again, even steelhead streams really need rain.
I was up in Erie about a week or so ago, and there's a ton of fish up there in those streams, but they are spooky and a little lost to it just because of how low the water is. We get a nice push of water, it'll really turn on.
And New York fish pretty good over this past weekend.
We were up there and we got some nice steelhead, salmon river, 5th, 12th. So steelhead options abound.
I would say focus on them a little more than our local trout.
But in another couple of weeks, we'll start getting into winter when those fish really want to put on that winter weight post spawn.
That's the time to really start throwing streamers around here locally.
Marvin:
[2:55] Yeah, but wait for a little rain on the steelhead streams and it'll be on like Donkey Kong, as the kids say, right?
George:
[3:01] Exactly, exactly.
Marvin:
[3:03] So we have a question for you from Brenner and he wanted to get your thoughts on what's the better trout habitat, overhanging branches or foam lines near still water?
George:
[3:14] That really depends on the flow and water type.
I mean, can't really answer that without knowing like a specific and that's going to vary.
I think that, you know, foam lines are always going to be where fish want to stack up because the food is there, but you know, sometimes they might want those overhanging branches just for protection.
But if there isn't food moving through those branches, they're not going to be there. So I think more important than those two questions is flow.
I think that fish are always going to stack more in water that's moving a little more because they got to spend less energy to stay there and they're going to get more food down that conveyor belt to them and they're going to probably eat a little more steadily in water where there's food coming towards them.
But a lot of variables with that, but I would probably be more apt to fish a foam line just because branches of the cover doesn't necessarily equate to fish being there.
Marvin:
[4:08] Got it. And you know folks we love questions on the articulate fly.
You can email them to us You can DM us on social media.
Whatever is easiest for you And if we use your question I will send you some articulate fly swag when you're in a drawing for something cool from the shop Which will probably be coming up very early in 2024, right George.
Yeah, I think so Yeah, yeah, and then of course as we as we start to slide into the holiday season I know you've got you know, I'm sure you got tons of stuff going on But I also know you have one very special Black Friday event Yeah, indeed.
George:
[4:39] We've got a George Daniel here on Friday the 24th, I believe it is the day after Thanksgiving. He's going to be here in the late afternoon around four to six o 'clock.
He's going to be signing his new book, which just came out a few weeks ago, which is fantastic.
So come down to the shop and get your book signed by George that Friday, the 24th. We've got a lot of good sales going on right now.
A bunch of holiday things here in the store. you know, all of our hours are normal as always, 9 to 6, Monday through Saturday, 9 to 3 on Sundays, and you know, find us on the web at ttoflyfishing .com, give a call here at the stop, and hope to see you guys soon.
Marvin:
[5:15] Yeah, well there you go, and since we won't be together again until after Thanksgiving, I want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, George.
George:
[5:23] Yeah, you too, Marvin.
Marvin:
[5:24] Tight lines, everybody.