A Sad Story

This past weekend I fished Friday (on Penns) Saturday with my grand daughter in State College and attended the Spring Creek Chapter of Trout Unlimited Banquet and Fund Raiser then fished Penns again Sunday, the Grannonm's were on in Coburn and it was not hard to find rising fish but you had to float it over them multiple times before they would take it but I did manage to take quite a few really nice browns on both dark and light #16 bubble back caddis. My granddaughter caught 9 fish before lunch at Mickey D's, then we fed the monster fish below the falls in Bellefonte before we finished the day at Sweet Frog for a treat, a day I think she will remember.
  While I was at the banquet I saw Greg Hoover who I have know and consider a good friend for over 38 years, we talked at length about Penns and Big Fishing Creek, I asked him what were his thoughts on the condition of BFC and he told me that in the past few years he has seen a steady decline in the water quality there. Greg told me that he has put in new substrate panels to access the insect populations and in past years they would be soon covered with caddis and mayfly nymphs but sad to say about all he gets on them now is midge larva and that in a red flag indicator of poor water quality along with a lot more sediment, he said it is a direct result of "the plain folks" farming practices! Ouch that really hurts especially because there is zero we can do to stop it, the use of chemicals is also playing a role in the water quality and insect populations, we need an orgization to step up and form a plan to help stop this from getting worse.
  Back to the fishing on Penns, did not see but a very few Hendrickson's all caddis and typicaly over by 1:30 - 2:00 PM. Did see a map of the deeded parcels below Coburn and low and behold none of the cabin owners above the bridge own any land from the edge of the road to the stream- amazing! All the no trespassing signs on the stream bank are a bluff, sad to see them but I guess it is a sign of the times. I need to fish below Cherry Run to see the full force of the Hendrickson's and a good spinner fall before the Grey Fox and March Brown start their march upstream but we need rain badly.