Pennsylvania foam beetles

Arriving just after a cold front with all the low water on Penns Creek
at the start of last October one might have been discouraged. But
I've always thought that to be a fisherman is to be optimistic. Well
we did manage to scratch our way to a few decent brown trout, most
coming from three good holes over a 3 day adventure. Did not run into
a single hatch the whole time on Penns. Other than the handful of
respectable fish that were lured out of one particular undercut bank,
the rest of our captured quarry were the result of patient stalking.
Without any hatches we hiked and hiked and waded, waited and waited
for a one-time rise. Then painstakingly maneuvered into position to
try to induce a second rise, this time to our feathered forgeries.
The highlight for my fishing buddy was hooking into the largest trout
he had ever seen - he claims it was over 30" when it panicked into a
quiet shallows just a couple of inches deep, rolled itself around the
leader and then flapped its way like a jumping bean back into the
foamy murk nearby.

We'd have never found our way to Maria Davison's Centre Mills B&B (a
~250 year old stone house in Rebersburg, PA) in the midnight autumn
fog of Centre County without a GPS navigational unit. Some of those
roads were the size of driveways and situated in between houses so as
to appear to be in fact driveways. The mist hung thick, low, all the
way down to ankle height. Street signs were completely cloaked in
opaque vapor. Staying at Maria's place gives you access to privately
restricted Elk Creek. But the 'crick' was about 6 inches deep in
October so most of the trout had retreated out of this Penns tributary
by the time we arrived.

The highlight of the trip for me was the multitude of surprises
tossing beetles at smallish browns on a roadside section of Spring
Creek which was right up against a residential area. We had make
arrangements to hire a guide from the Feathered Hook in Coburn for one
of the days to give us a tour of the waters in the area. Upon
entering the fly shop at a leisurely 9 AM I figured the 20-something
kid in the waders would be our guide. No, it turned out that the
septuagenarian gentleman in blue jeans was Jack. I don't know his
real age but I think I've got the right decade pegged. He looked over
our flyboxes and nodded approvingly. Jack moved at tortoise pace
but was relentless. Whether walking on pavement, climbing out of the
water onto a 5 foot high bank, dodging boulders in rough water, he
seemed to move with a uniform pace. When in motion he was as light as
a phantom. When at rest he relied on his staff to brace himself
against the earth and her gravity in a pose that reminded me of Yoda
even though Jack's lanky frame cast a silhouette that bore no
resemblance to the diminutive Jedi.

When we stepped into that part of Spring Creek, it looked like the
kind of water that I would normally pass by without wetting a line.
No obvious lies, flat water, about two feet deep everywhere. Jack
handed me a #14 black foam beetle that looked like perfect bluegill
bait. The voice in my head said that if there were any trout in this
meager ribbon of water they call a creek, I'd have to toss a #22 CDC
pattern and be able levitate instead of wading. We waded very slowly
in order to get within close casting range. Tight banks and
overhanging tree limbs severely limited the possibility for fully
aerialized backcasts.

"There he his. 18 feet in front of us about 5 feet out from the reed
sticking out from the shore."

I did not see anything. There was no hatch in progress. No bugs to
be seen drifting in the water. I asked what the trout was eating.

"Terrestrials. Stuff falling from these overhanging trees."

Huh? I can't see jack, Jack. There was no rise. How had he spotted
a fish? How could there even be any fish in this featureless water
with a hard river bottom that was inhospitable to aquatic vegetation?

"These are small brown trout. About 6 to 9 inches but already wily.
You won't see a rise. They will come up and suck the bug out of the
surface film while remaining completely underwater. All you will see
is the slightest disturbance in the flatness of the water."

A disturbance in what? The Force? My eyes are only half as old as
his but I didn't see anything.

"Cast delicately without throwing water drops or lining the fish but
make the bug splat when it hits the water. If you must false cast,
keep it off to the side before making your final delivery. When the
beetle hits the water, twitch it once ever so slightly so that only
the fly gives off ripples, not your leader or line."

What the ...? Is he for real? This is a spring creek. In fact it's
named Spring Creek. Slapping a #14 foam beetle 20 feet in front of me
ain't gonna fool no brown trout. Well we were paying the guy so I
wasn't sure if I'd feel more like a fool for following his advice or
ignoring it. I did what he said and started collecting the fly line
with the left hand fingers as the fly came drifting back towards me.
I never saw the fish take.

"He's got it. Set the hook."

The trout took my fly just as Jack said they would be taking the
naturals. No rise. It came up and did not break the water. The fly
just simply appeared to sink for no reason and with an unexpected
though not unnatural velocity.

Well this pattern of events repeated itself several times. I was only
able to spot half the fish he did. I only became convinced he was not
putting me on because I actually did manage to hook fish in those
spots where he said there were fish but I had not seen.

When we got back to the fly shop I relayed the day's events to the guy
behind the counter. What an eye-opening experience. Was this
typical, I asked.

"No. I never fish that way. Most people around here don't either.
That Jack is a real piece of work No matter what the bugs and fish
are doing on any given day on the water he'll keep on throwing that
beetle and keep on catching fish."

Well, on the water, I had thought I had just been shown some keen
insight into the fish of Spring Creek. I may have actually been
exposed to something that is more generally applicable to trout
anywhere. A few months have gone by but but it's still not clear
exactly what is the proper lesson learned from that encounter. Maybe
there is no lesson other than that I had witnessed a bit of
Pennsylvania trout magic.

Mu
San Jose, California