![]() Try the new "Delayed Harvest" (artificial lures only) stretch that covers 11/2 miles of stream below the East Branch Dam. I really like fishing this branch when either the spring melt or heavy showers make the main stem too ugly to fish. The Willamette Fish and Game Club stocks heavily above this park, and the pools are big enough to support some very nice holdovers. will outproduce a dry fly almost every time.Īt Bendigo State Park, halfway between Johnsonburg and the East Branch Dam, there's a small impoundment that was originally used as a swimming area. A lightly weighted emerger fished at the tail of the riffles late in the day -7 to 9 P.M. These insects are on the large side (#16) for the species and have an orange cast to their bodies. Mating flights of Sulphurs over the riffles become pronounced by the second week of May. I'll frequently tie an olive and dun emerger as a dropper behind a Cahill or a Stimulator when the light is poor -as it frequently is on the overcast days when this little mayfly prefers to hatch -and do much better.įrom about the second week in May up to the same date in June, trout readily accept standard Cahill imitations (#14) with a cream-colored body most late afternoons. If you want to fish cold water in August, this is the next best thing to a legitimate spring creek.Ī #18 or #20 olive-bodied parachute-style dry will cover most of the Blue-winged Olive hatches on this water. Hatches start about a week later than similar hatches on surrounding streams and last a tad longer than the hatch charts tell you. Water temperatures on the East Branch stay in the mid 50s throughout the summer, and you'll find a limited selection of the standard hatches of Blue-winged Olives, Sulphurs, March Browns, Cahills, and tan and green caddis on this water. Spilling from a bottom-discharge dam some 6 miles from its confluence with the West Branch, the East Branch is paralleled for most of its length by the Glenn Hazel Road. Although these branches would be immediately recognizable to any small-stream specialist, they're about as different as two small streams can be. Your fingers represent the West and East Branches where they come together in the small town of Johnsonburg. ![]() If you hold your arm out in front of you and make the "V" for victory sign with your fingers, you will have an accurate picture of this watershed. The electroshocking portion of their environmental samplings turned up those leviathans -origin of the rumor I tracked down -and there can be no greater testimonial to all the work that has been done than the Wild and Scenic designation bestowed on this river by the U.S. Nowhere is the evidence of this cleanup more apparent than in the aquatic samplings taken as a part of the environmental permits conducted by Willamette Industries after they purchased and upgraded the paper mill. But that, with a great deal of work by individuals, agencies, organizations, and businesses, has changed. Perhaps that is because as recently as the early 1990s, when new owners took over an aging paper plant at the confluence of its two branches, the residue and thermal discharge from that mill, plus numerous acid mine seeps and poorly designed sewage treatment facilities throughout the watershed, rendered it nearly lifeless. And, incredibly, with all these pluses, very few people outside the immediate area have heard of this river. Furthermore, the lack of consistent, heavy hatches means that those big browns are generalists that survive on baitfish, hellgrammites, and crayfish that can be copied and fished with terminal tackle stout enough to give decent odds for landing them. The Clarion is an accessible river that requires neither professional guides nor special tackle, and is completely fishable without a boat. Half of them confirmed the rumor the other half were just run-of-the-mill big trout.ĭefining much of the eastern and southern boundaries of the 513,000-acre Allegheny National Forest in mountainous northwestern Pennsylvania, the Clarion River may very well be the least known big-trout water in the eastern United States. For ten minutes, I watched goggle-eyed as a procession of spawning browns struggled up through that shallow run. I had been tracking down a rumor of "brown trout up to 31 inches" and on that November day in 1999, my search ended. Then a commotion in the riffles caught my attention, and I put on my polarized glasses. A cold, late-fall rain created a choppy sheen on the surface and blocked my view of the streambed. For several minutes I searched the little pool and riffle below me.
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