A 3-Stream Tour of the Allegheny National Forest

Despite the recent stocking, the stream wasn’t crowded. That’s one of the perks of fishing around here in early May – it corresponds with turkey hunting season, and most folks are out chasing gobblers until noon.

I’d never fished Salmon Creek before – in fact, I’d never even seen the stream – although Greg has spent many years exploring this area. He’s always said that you have to be careful when visiting the ANF. Spend too much time here and you may never want to leave.

Salmon Creek is a typical mountain stream, 20-30 feet wide. The past year or so, it’s been difficult to judge a stream due to low water levels. At normal flows, Salmon Creek has numerous big pools and pockets of holding water. Even now, with low water, there were still some attractive pools, but much of it was shallow, knee-deep flats with a scattering of good-looking pockets, usually up against some sort of log or brush pile coming off the bank.

I made my first few casts near some undercut roots and didn’t draw a strike. Meanwhile, across the creek from me, a guy and his two kids plied a pocket of water roughly the size of a table top with spinners and minnows. Eventually, one of the kids latched onto and landed a nice brook trout. A few minutes later, he caught another. The dad netted both fish for his son while untangling a mess of line for his daughter. When the son hooked a third trout, the father threw his hands up and jokingly said, “Come on, man, can’t I even get a chance to fish?!”

I know my days of fishing with my kids are coming. I feel prepared. I mean, heck, I’ve spent my whole life getting caught in trees and untangling birds nests of line while watching others catch trout. I got this.

Eventually, I worked my way downstream and came to a big, deep pool where a guy and his girlfriend were fishing. I asked if I could squeeze in below them and fish the tail end of the pool and they were very genial. He said they’d caught a couple but it had been slow overall. The weather didn’t help. It rained pretty much constantly, varying between soft mist and downpour, and it was cold. Supposedly it was going to switch over to snow around 9 o’clock. Welcome to the ANF!

The color of the water and the conditions were perfect for a fluorescent green Squirmy Wormy dropped off the bend of a white/pink Y2K. The trout thoughts so, too. I caught my first Salmon Creek trout after only a handful of casts near the tail end of the pool. Right after that, the guy caught one, too, and he wondered aloud if maybe I had brought some good luck with me.

After a while, they called it quits and decided to head back to their camp. Greg had worked downstream and caught one on a spinner, so I waved him over to fish the pool with me. We each hooked a couple and lost a couple. I landed 3 or 4 more, and then we went for what seemed like a long time without a hit. By now it felt colder, although the rain hadn’t yet changed to snow, and we decided to head back to the truck and take a drive and see what else we could get into.