Spring Creek question

[The Stan]

I had a chance to fish spring creek (Houserville area) again today. I fished about an hour and a half and caught 5, all on ants. My question is related to the last fish. It, in my opinion, was a wild (stream bred) rainbow about 7" long.

Has anyone else caught wild rainbows on Spring Creek? Are they getting to be common?

I've probably caught 50 or so trout on spring creek in the last two years, but that was the first rainbow.

 

[dwiz]

Residents put them in there. It's catch and release. Depending on where you are in "houserville" and people are actually releasing, you should have no problem catching rainbows.

 

[Victor E. Bell]

I would guess you're between Trout Rd. and Spring Creek Park somewhere. There has been no harvest there since I was at PSU in the 80's so I imagine there is a breeding population of 'bows but I don't remember the stream temps they require. I always did well on ants on Spring Creek and the crickets are about to come around too.

Nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to breeding populations. They adapt. As dwiz states, people may have put fish in there but they move around...a lot. More than people realize.

 

[81b&w]

A year in the stream and eating bugs and minnows will change a trouts appearance and it's really hard to tell a holdover vs wild rainbow. I caught about a 5" palamino at the very bottom of Spring, a couple holes up from where it goes into the Bald Eagle years ago, and it sure looked and fought wild. I'd like to think it was stream bred. I'll never know

 

[Limestone_Lion]

It could be an escaped trout from any of the hatcheries, and that would be my first guess. I haven't caught a rainbow above Bellefonte in a long time

 

[Victor E. Bell]

A year in the stream and eating bugs and minnows will change a trouts appearance and it's really hard to tell a holdover vs wild rainbow.

So true.

 

[Limestone_Lion]

Just FYI, bald eagle (from where spring creek dumps in, and down), the state stocks fingerling rainbow trout. During the summer months, it's is very common to catch a lot more rainbow trout than Browns in lower spring. I do not know if any of the RT can make it over the falls in the town of Bellefonte, but the salmo family have a long history of doing pretty remarkable things. So it could also be one of those.

But last I have heard is that RT do not reproduce in any large numbers in spring creek (if at all), so odds are against a truly wild fish.

 

[The Stan]

Did some searching on Google, and found various references to wild rainbows in spring creek, most said from Lemont upstream. Some said from Spring Creek park up. Seems like most of the references are from 2014 on... I was in the area of Spring Creek park, upper end. Still sticking with my thought is was a wild rainbow.

 

[Ct. Lion]

This goes back to the 1960s so it probably has no relevance to today's trout fishing in the State College area but the Fish Commission liked to stock the small ponds like Whipples Dam with rainbows since they were easier to catch than the browns and could survive in warmer water than the brookies. But rainbows like to wander and after a few days of swimming around Whipples in large schools the rainbows would either go upstream in Laurel Run or if there was a heavy rain they would simply go over the spillway into the lower stretch of Laurel Run and head down towards the Standing Stone creek.
If you have never fished the lower Laurel Run it was a relatively wild brook with no really easy access and it had rainbows all through it even in the summer. The water quality was good enough for spawning and there were small trout in it, mostly little brookies, but I would expect some rainbows held over and spawned.
Wild rainbows in the East are less frequent than brookies or browns. I can only think of two good wild rainbow fisheries other than the Great Lakes tribs and those are the upper Delaware main stem from Hancock down to Narrowsburg and the Esopus in the Catskills above the Ashokan Reservoir from the Portal down to the Chimney Pool.
A couple of the Finger Lakes used to have decent spring rainbow runs too.
The best of the Lake Erie tribs was the Cattaraugus Creek in NY and its tribs where rainbows and steelhead would run in the late Fall through the early Spring and successfully spawn in some of the small spring fed tribs.
Lake Ontario has a number of tiny creeks with good water quality that get modest runs of steelhead and rainbows that can spawn successfully plus the big creeks like the Salmon River which has some wild populations.
The above are places I have fished for wild and lake-run rainbows with some success.

 

[LionJim]

The above are places I have fished for wild and lake-run rainbows with some success.

Nice thread even for this non-fisherman. That last line of yours, Hemingwayesque.

 

[tgar]

Did some searching on Google, and found various references to wild rainbows in spring creek, most said from Lemont upstream. Some said from Spring Creek park up. Seems like most of the references are from 2014 on... I was in the area of Spring Creek park, upper end. Still sticking with my thought is was a wild rainbow.

Stan, it was a wild rainbow. I have caught them in the Creek as well.

 

[supermatt24]

I grew up in Houserville so I fished Spring Creek hundreds of times and I regularly caught rainbows in addition to brook and brownies (also a palimino once).