I crossed it off the list.
Success!
But lets not get ahead of ourselves....
Man, what a weekend.
First weekend of February and it was in the mid 40s and sunny two days in a row. This doesn't happen often, so I took full advantage of it.
Packed the truck Friday night so I could get off to an early start Saturday morning. Alarm went off at 7:45, I rolled out of bed around 8 and hit the road.
I decided to hit 2 streams that have been on my list for a while now. Both streams are on the PFBC "Pennsylvania Wilderness Trout Waters" list. Both are located within public land. And both are withing walking distance of each other.
I got to the stream about 9:30am and headed off into the woods. The air was chilly and there was still snow on the ground.
The water was cold and flowing clear.
I fished all morning and and caught a ton of pretty little dinks.
Came across some cool stuff.
And caught a few nice size gemmies.
All said and done, I hiked just a hair over 6 miles on Saturday and caught a few dozen fish
Sunday, February 7th, 2016.
It was still unseasonably warm. It was going to be sunny and mid-upper 40s during the day. I decided to take advantage of another unseasonably warm day and fish.
I headed back out to the Laurel Highlands without much of a plan this time. In the morning, I fished a stocked stream in the the Laurel Hill Creek drainage in hopes of finding some holdovers. No luck, but did manage 2 nice native brookies in about a mile hike.
I fished this stream until lunch time then headed back to the truck to eat lunch and regroup.
I've been itching to find some wild browns in the Laurel Highlands, so I took the chance in the afternoon to fish a stream that feeds a stream stocked with brooks, browns, and 'bows.
The headwaters stream is located in Forbes State Forest.
After about a mile of hiking, I reached the stream
I fished it for a while and every suspecting spot held at least one little brookie.
After fishing it for a bit, I came into my first Laurel Highlands wild brown.
Success! One of my goals for 2016 reached in just 38 days.
I fished for a while longer and actually hooked into 2 more browns, both wild and both about 12".
I typically don't carry a net when I fish, but this day, I really REALLY regret not carrying one. If I had a net with me, I would have been able to land both of the other browns.
Live and learn I guess.
Anywho.
I reached another of my 2016 goals Sunday afternoon. By some stroke of sheer dumb luck, I was able to hook a wild tiger trout.
These fish are called the Holy Grail of PA wild trout and once in a lifetime trout. I can understand why.
Tiger trout are a sterile, intergeneric hybrid of a brown trout (Salmo trutta) and a brook trout (salvelinus fontinalis). Hatchery raised tiger trout are common since the are artificially produced but it is very rare to find one that is stream bred in the wild because the brook trout has 84 chromosomes and the brown trout has 80.
Two goals reached in one day. I am more than thrilled. Next up, catching a wild rainbow trout.
