Have Fly Rod will Travel for WORK
I know there are some of you who will find this hard to believe, but I do still work for a living. It’s not all fun and games but on occasion the two do collide. For me, that means I get a site installation that is close to fishable water and if I’m really lucky a little extra time to fish it. This is the story of one such trip.
I was up, as usual, 15 minutes before the alarm, 3:15 am. I was already packed, clothes laid out and just a short drive to the airport to catch a 5:30 flight to Chicago. A two hour layover followed by a second flight to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania puts me in my rental car by noon. I made the 45 minute drive over to Boiling Springs to scout out the area and talk to a few locals. Actually, to find some of the access points I found pouring over online sites and maps over the past couple of months.
The first thing I came to realize was that the catch and release section, 1 mile of water stating where the ‘run’ pours into the Yellow Breeches, was not for me. On a Monday I expected to see only a few fishers out but this resembled a Missouri trout park on Sunday. Not a Saturday crowd, mind you, but way too many people in a short section of stream for me. A lot of websites wrote about how this C&R section gets pounded on and I now know firsthand that they weren’t exaggerating. I had been researching the Boiling Springs area and looking over maps to find other access points. This can, at times, be a bit misleading, what looks good on a computer screen may actually turn out to be posted private property or you find other obstacles not visible from the satellite view. I was checking off my second site when my luck changed and I ran into someone willing to point me in the right direction.
So I now had a couple of less used access point to work with and I was also able to get some more info on LeTort Spring. An all wild native brown trout stream known for smashing the dreams of the most experienced fly fisher. Access seems to be quite limited but I was given a couple of places to choose from. In my opinion, nothing beats info from the fisher on the stream. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to decipher, especially directions, but more than not, the info is gold and usually nothing you would ever find on a website.
On the way back to the hotel, I purchased a three day license and trout stamp. I was all set.
By J. K. Smith
OUTbound
So Much Water.... So Little! Time!
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