Fly Fishing Penn’s Creek with Jonas Price and Matt Kowalchuk, The Feathered Hook, Coburn, PA

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This week on the destination angler…

…when it is hard, overcast and murky, muddy water, those trout act like it's nighttime and therefore are not afraid that a raptor bird is going to come pluck them out of the stream and they get drunk. It is last call at the bar.

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Welcome to the destination angler Podcast, the podcast for anglers who travel. And I'm your host Steve Haigh. We go right to the source the local guides and experts to build your knowledge of top fishing locations around North America. It's a big world out there now go and fishing.

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Hey, listeners. Thanks for tuning in.

The destination angler podcast is growing by leaps and bounds. Thanks to all of you. We have listeners in every state and many countries around the world. We recently hit a major milestone now have 2000 followers on Instagram. So before we jump into our main event today, I thought it'd be fun to bring our listener number 2000 A great guy named Joe Cattle onto the show here about fishing destinations in other parts of the world. So here we go.

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Hey, thanks for making time to be on the show. Like I was saying your Instagram follower number 2000. So I don't know if that's good or bad for you. But congratulations.

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Oh, well if you put out some more interesting podcasts like the last one was the Bahamas man. I'm very interested. Good to hear it. Where are you from? Joe? It sounds like with that accent you might be from overseas somewhere like the UK. Yeah, I mean, the Yukon based in Essex, just outside London, outside of London. Okay, is that where you're from originally? Yeah, yeah, I've been here all my life. Okay, good. So what kind of fishing do you do over there? Well, we're Europe and England and that he's mad keen on carp fishing, carp fishing. Okay, that's my main sort of fishing over here. Yes, carp is is the main popular species in the country. I've been doing that since I was a boy so for nearly four years or so I've been doing that. Wow. And I noticed on your Instagram page that you tend to go somewhere south and fish for some permits. Nope. Those sorts of things. Yeah, that's my real passion is a fly fishing not flat for the bottom fish permit and tarpon Snoke and Beresford is in the jacks and otter our the the nice saltwater stuff in the warm climate. Yeah. Where do you go for that? Overall the really, Mexico I've been going quite a lot because it's it's wife friendly there so we can go to a nice hotel and I can sneak off for a couple of days here and now.

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When I'll go with when I go with my friend is a full holiday serving Cuba quite a lot. And I had a big one a big one a couple of years ago to the Seychelles to the Providence at home. That was the once in a lifetime experience that was fantastic for the food giant. Binti yeah sure is hellishly expensive and I don't think I'll be able to ever afford to do it again but it was worth it. It was an experience

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did you take a wife along on that one? No, no that was that was a purely a boys getaway that was yeah, it was it's a livable boat and a hell of a journey to get there and real on the edge fishing once you're there. It's it's fantastic little wide fishing and stuff. Okay, yeah. What's it like to hook a giant Ravalli I guess he's like hooking a truck really if you

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if you stand outside your own and wait for

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an F 150 to go past cast and hook he's bumper then that would be a pretty good description of booking the GT. Yeah, they're unbelievable. What do they do? They just take off on a screeching run. Like they do but you you hang on to them big too.

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If you let them go they're gonna get you off and cut you off into to the reef and the coral heads and that there so you really hang on to him hard and you you're not fishing

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like like fly lines or line class type flyer stuff. It's it's 150 pound leaders and you don't really run into him you sort of straight random and stop and yeah, so it's amazing. Yeah. You're not prepared for it. They tell you about it but you're not prepared until you actually do it. And then it's it's it's fireworks. It's really good. Wow, hang on for dear life. Yeah, yeah. How's the fishing in Cuba is good on where we go to

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the Jardins that Urena, which is quite our national park so it's well protected. And the fencing there or when I first went there, which would be for my 40th birthday back in 2003. It was a relatively young fishery then. And since then, it's improved. I've been there probably six times now it's improved with the tarp fine and a permit and stuff over and over because it is a really well run area. They have a place to go and not so much Kayo Coco is another area go, which is a hotel based holiday, which often go with my wife. And that area does get a little bit of fished commercially and stuff. So it's not quite as prolific. It's still good, but not as good as as Robin still Urena. Oh, that's wonderful. All right, so take me back to the UK and carp fishing. So how are you going after carp? Oh, well, we bite fish we were fish with. They call them boilies. Here, you'd call them dough balls. But they're all special mixes with flavors and different various high protein ingredients. And you buy up a lot and trying to fish to like that by and and you catch the fish and it's all catch and release and that we treat them like babies and they go back. I've actually got fish that have still being called now that was caught in 1980. There 50 plus years old and there's quite a bit. Yeah, they've been documented over the years. So they're revered. And because they've been caught a few times I get a bit cagey and they're, they're not so easy.

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I'll bet so you just put something really stinky on the end of the hook and they come in and take some of that some are really stinky, some are quite fruity and nice little strawberry flavor is a very good flavor and stuff like that. They like that. And they love sweet corn and maize and stuff. So lots of different ways depending on how big is a 50 year old carp they go to record in England is in the 60 pounds saw Mark now but in on Europe, they go to over 100 pounds and they've gone to now which is absolutely huge and it for a car. Sometimes that some of the oldest cars have been registered as sort of 26 pounds in the mid 50s. And getting caught in the mid nine is still 26 pounds. Wow.

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Uh, various strains and sizes that I was interested in. Okay, that's great. I grew up carp fishing when I was a real little kid. And oh, boy. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they're big fish. Right. So as a little kid, you've got like a six, seven pound carpet in the line. It'll get your attention. Yeah, they don't. They're not revered so much in America all over the carpet more often. And especially on the fly. Yeah, right. You ever tried it on the fly? Not carp. Now, we face with floating dog biscuits. And sometimes you put them on an artificial one and they want on the fly. And get them like There you go. Well, floating dog biscuit. Well, I haven't tried that one before. That sounds like a good idea though. I never mix them around and you can feed them up and try and enjoy them. It's wasteful. Well, Joe, thanks for taking a few minutes to be on the show. And I wish you all all the success in the world and your fishing adventures and in life. Okay, thank you very much Steve Cain podcast, and I look at some of the plants. That sounds good.

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And today our destination is Penns Creek in central Pennsylvania. And our guests are Jonas price owner and Matt Kowalchuk, head guide of the feathered hook in Coburg pa Central Pennsylvania is home to some of the finest limestone trout streams in America. Names like the little Juniata big fishing Creek, Spring Creek, spruce Creek and Big Spring Creek or hollow ground for the serious fly angler, and Penns Creek is the granddaddy of them all. With hatches of biblical proportions in highly educated fish, Penns Creek will challenge and reward the best of anglers. A little bit about Jonas and Matt Jonas is a Seattle transplant has been fishing the waters of Central Pennsylvania and running his fly shop for the past 23 years. What started as an excuse to be a professional Trump bomb has turned into a lifetime passion for Jonas, but I'll let him tell you a little bit more about that in the show. Matt is a central Pennsylvania

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in your native having hunted and fished and trap the series since he was a kid. At age 15, he joined the USA youth fly fishing team and even competed in the 2007 Youth World Fly Fishing Championship. Jonas and Matt are here to dial us in to this masterclass stream called Penns Creek. That should be an every serious anglers bucket list. Hey guys, great to have you on. Welcome to the show. Jonas and Matt. Hey, Steve. Thanks for having us. Oh, Steve. Thanks. Yeah. So Jonas, you've been down in Texas for a little while doing some fish. And how's that going? Well, I can't complain. There's no winter down here. As they got probably more than 25 inches of snow at home since I've left. I haven't had to shovel once. For personal good. And I heard you had a pretty good day today with some large mouth. Ah, yeah. Today was a good day. I hammered some good fish. Nice. Good. Matt, what do you been up to? I've been working on the renovations at our new lodge, just up the road from our current operation for double bathrooms. It's ever good. That's a really old farmhouse. Is that right? It is. It's from

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somewhere in the late 1700s. Or cool building. Cool. All right. That's gonna be your new your new lodge there and pinch Creek. Ah, yeah. It's actually just up the creek on Pine Creek, one of the tributaries to go on Pine Creek. Yeah. Oh, very nice. I look forward to checking that out. Yeah. All right. So guys, before you just get ready for the show here. I went online and found some descriptions of pens Creek. I've been there. But I thought let's see what what I can find here. Here's some words that I found to describe pence Creek legendary. Crown Jewel, complex, finicky. Special, technical, frustrating, rewarding. So what do you guys think? Is that a good list? I leave anything out. I definitely leave some things out. Yeah, fickle is a good one. Also, I would say that I don't know what the word is for this. But it's probably not as hard as its reputation presents. But a lot of anglers are pretty bad. Yeah.

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Well, it keeps you guys in business. Right? They need guides. Well, they need guides and they need good information. And I think one of the main things that we all forget in this world of stocked trout is how different a stock trout is from a wild trout. You know, and a wild trout is instinctively much harder to catch, I think than a wild trout. But, you know, it's proved definitely not impossible. Okay. And so Penns Creek is full of wild trout in your area. Is that right? Yeah. So it's the longest spring fed limestone stream in the state of Pennsylvania is 65 miles long. It does have some areas that still receive stocking, but the primary 18 miles that we fish predominantly are all wild fish. Yes, I'll say more about you know what makes Penns Creek so special. So the thing that sets Penns Creek, apart from all the other streams in the area is its massive hatches, it has a high density of fish, about 3400 fish per mile. But it's not the highest Spring Creek about a half an hour from us as the highest density of wild fish in the state at just over 4000. It has good size fish and a good average sized fish. The state says that that average is at about 14 inches. But the hatches are absolutely spectacular. Gems one thing that may be worth noting and what everything you're saying is downstream from Elk Creek, Pine Creek, because there is a good fishery above that that you know less talked about, but just the influence there. The influence of elk Creek and Pine Creek. Yeah, make just me I'm Penn's Creek even better because Penn's Creek is a great stream. But then you throw those two in the mix. And it's like gumbo. So we don't, it's not referred to this way on any map. But there's nine miles from where it comes out of the cave before it gets to Coburn. And we refer to that as little penance Creek. Right. And then after elk and Pine Creek come in, it increases in volume by about 40%. And the nutrient boost it receives from out in Pine Creek is also dramatic. Even though it's a springfed limestone stream, it gets a big shot of cold water and it gets a big shot of nutrients from those much smaller, shorter I should say springfed limestone streams and and from there down is really the area that when people talk about pens Great, that's the area that I'm referring to. And so that's absolutely right. That's pens in all its glory. I see and that's Class A wild trout waters cool

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didn't get the state. Correct. Correct from from where outcome Pine Creek come in down to the next 80 miles. And that's that's right. Just a little bit outside of Coburn. Right? Oh, three Coburn 300 yards downstream from the shop. Okay, you guys are right on it there. And there's a catch and release section two, is that right? Yes, there is a loving miles of catch and release water that starts at the bottom of Polk County State Park and stretches all the way down through the town of Weicker. Okay, while we're on the topic here, let's, let's talk a little bit more about the you know, the character of the water. So, you say it comes out of a cave, right because it's a Spring Creek, right? Correct. And so techniques of Spring Creek but some say it fishes a lot like a freestone Creek. Would you agree? I think it has a lot of Freestone characteristics. It looks like a freestone stream. Matt, you want to get in on that? No, it looks like a free stone. Flow temps of limestone. Yeah, bug life of a limestone bug behavior of a free stone. Yeah, more temperamental than the other local limestone. Sure. Okay. When you say temperamental, what do you mean by that? By firing influenced by rainfall, precipitation, okay, like free stones, or, you know, Super Bounce depending on what rain does. Like Indus Creek is very like the rains a little bit in the valley can see that to some extent, through Penns Creek. Are the tributaries dumping into it. Yeah. Okay. It drains a gigantic area to it drains like 48,000 Square acres or something like that. And it has a lot of tributaries and a lot of forest runoff that comes down into it, that both directly affect the aquifer that feeds it, as well as directly into the stream. Okay. What is it about limestone that that, you know, is it does it just create great habitat? Does it help bug life? What is it about limestone? Fabulous questions? It's the answer is pH balance. And so the critical issue with limestone, is that it is nature's perfect trout pure water purifier. This is demonstrated by the state of Pennsylvania actually, we have had a lot of streams more on the Pittsburgh side that had a lot of acid mine drainage runoff, and it becomes non inhabitable. And the way they solve that is they literally dump truckloads of limestone rock into the upper parts of the stream. And then that water filters through the limestone. And most of those streams now hold trout again. Over there by Pittsburgh, you say? Yeah, in the Pittsburgh general Pittsburgh direction from us. Okay. And that cleaned them up? Yeah, that's literally all it took that state had tried many, many different efforts to try to clean up those streams, and dumping limestone and fix them. Okay. We just happen to sit on a geological anomaly of limestone outcroppings, that all the water comes through the aquifer to the water to the streams.

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It's nice. Can you say a little bit about you know, what's, what's the character of the stream, you know, down from Coburn right through that real special area? Like, you know, how wadeable is it? You know, what kind of cover is there? You know, maybe you know, how wide is it? What's the flow is give us a sense of that, if you could, is the worst waiting stream I've ever been on.

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I started carrying the waiting staff there at 27. The reason why is there's essentially at least in the upper stretch of it, no gravel, it looks like people took 1960s televisions and just broke them into two pieces and strewn them about it is it is just rocks. It's Rocky, Rocky, super Rocky, and that creates a course fantastic bug and trout habitat. It's a riffle Ron pool kind of stream. If you don't like the water, you're in walk up or downstream 200 yards it will be totally different. Cool. And it's funny because certain areas, I'm sure Matt has his favorites. I also have my favorites but I think of them like playgrounds, you know where it is just dramatically more rocky or a big pool with great cover and structure at the bottom. It is a fairly wide stream ranging from 60 to 100 feet wide. It has good riparian vegetation on both sides, but doesn't have a ton of overhanging trees. You can always almost always find somewhere to go cast. You know you don't have to make a tunnel cast up through the middle of 40 different trees. Matt could probably speak to its characteristics better than I could

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That's the That's all, I think very accurate just nailed it. The thing that really clicked if you haven't been there is the TV's broken in half there and into the stream. If you remove the water, I mean, that's where you come look at it and low flows. That's exactly what it looks like. It's miserable to wade through. I'm 30 now, and I still am not using the staff. But I can't imagine it'll be many more years. And we require all of our guided customers to carry one. Yeah. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah, I mean, enough people have fallen, it's just, we tell them, if you don't need it, you don't need it, it's on your belt in a holster. But if you need it, it's the third leg. And most not everybody, but you always end up with, you know, one of those folks, like I don't need that and then re quarters of the way or halfway through the day, or maybe an hour end of the day, you've gotten a mountain to rip on. It's like, okay, I want to go back to the bank and move up aways. And they're like, Well, I can't turn around. Or how does this folder get between?

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You know, because when you're fishing, you make 10 cast, and you take a step, waiting is not just a to be it's fishing and moving. Right. And when you do that on Penns Creek, because of the like the nature of it, where you're at, and just the beauty and the scenery, you really tend to lose yourself. And next thing you know, you are standing in the middle of the stream, and you do have a boulder between your legs, and there's a boulder in front of you. And you know, there's a white cap coming off of that. And you're like, Well, how do I turn around the fluids at 750? It's, I don't want to say dangerous, but you definitely need to wait with caution. That's made me realize the dangers of water, you know, in situations that I could have bet in. But it's all manageable. It's definitely manageable. And I think that's one of the things that scares people. I can tell you why. You know, I grew up in our a little over an hour from men's Creek. And I didn't fish it for 20 years almost. Because it was you know, like Jonas said, when people hear about it. It's a stream screen. It's it's intimidating. I think the most intimidating thing is waiting. It runs with what we call a Penns Creek green, the limestone color, we can't always see the bottom which is good that plays to the benefit of the angler and that you can get a lot closer to the fish. But what that does is that scares anglers, because if they can't see the bottom, you know, they're not comfortable waiting. And then you throw you know, you throw a spring shower in there and the creek bumps 100 CFS, maybe, but you took a little bit of color. And that phone's just ringing off the hook is pens blown out. Is it fishable Why are you calling you you should be you should already be here fishing, because it's fishing late that banner, but they're too scared because they just they can't see what's in front of them. That's a great point. That is a great point. Because one of the misunderstandings of a lot of people is that because they're used to a freestone stream that runs clear. Right if pens Creek is clear, we're in a drought. Right if you can see in the bottom and four feet of water. We're in a drought. Yeah, right. And that's when Penns Creek gets really hard. Right? If you can see the bottom and the fish can see you, Penns Creek deserves all of those description words you used and the normal flow under normal conditions. Penns Creek, this is like a difficult but not by any means impossible stream. Fish want to eat. They're there to eat and there's stuff to eat. I want to use the term biological imperative. Yeah, they gotta eat it. Yeah. But people get really scared when it runs wood color. But that's a misunderstanding. Those fish live in that environment 365 days a year. If 250 of those days have stained water or more, they still have to eat the analogy. If I remember correctly, you live in Indianapolis? I do. Okay, so it snows in Indianapolis use don't eat food during that time when it snows. Of course you eat food during that time when it's just like these fish are perfectly prepared to eat food biologically evolutionarily prepared to eat food when the water is off color they have to no matter what right so Jonas let me ask you if it's such difficult waiting, why are people calling the shop and saying hey is blown out? I want to come out there Can I come fish you know what is it about pinch Creek than if it's the waiting so tough. There's something else that brings them in? What is it? Well, obviously completely biased. So let's say that up front, but but Penns Creek is a magical place. Your group that came originally to the shop goes all over the country if I remember correctly to fishing destinations. Yeah

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There is something about Penns Creek, that either you love her, and you want to come see her as often as your life allows you to do so. Or she was so difficult. You never want anything to do with that kind of hard fishing again. And there are different kinds of fishermen out there You listed a series of streams in your intro, some of which are much easier. Spring Creek, the little Juniata spruce Creek, right, spruce Creek is a managed fishery. That is I don't want to call it easy, because it's not easy. I've been there, but it's a much easier environment. Right Spring Creek, which is a wild fishery is a much easier environment, both for waiting reasons. And for fish catching reasons, right. But every fish I catch on Penn's Creek, I feel like I I know that I did everything right for that drift. And that sets her apart for me from a lot of the other streams that I've been to. I grew up out west, the waiting and the Henry's fork was so hard, I didn't have waiting shoes, I just use old sneakers. And it was so simple to catch fish there, that it was wonderful and enjoyable. And I go back there. Right. But But Penns Creek is a special place where people come back for their multi generational family experiences. It's wild, in the middle of the woods, right in the middle of a tiny town of 250 people. It's reasonably close to major cities, but not really close to any major cities that are closest, you know, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are both about three hours away. But the number of people over my career who have come in, who started fishing there with their grandfather, whatever generation that was that started fishing there with their grandfather, and then bring their kids there. That's the kind of fishery it is people must like the challenge then of Penns Creek, to some extent, some of them love it. Others of them hate it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I remember our first our first night there, we got there late. So the shop wasn't open, we went out and fished. And we caught nothing. And there was a guy, you know, we're fishing right below his cab, and he came out. And he caught like four or five fish at a time we're standing there. And we're like, What in the world are you doing? You know, and we couldn't figure out what the guy was doing that we weren't. And then we went to the shop. And, you know, had breakfast with you and the guides the next morning. And Matt might have been you one of the guys was saying, well, here's what you got to do. You gotta get that fly right on the bottom, we're talking on the bottom not headed to the bottom, on the bottom. And you guys, when you're when you're Nin fishing, that's what you guys are doing, right? I mean, it's on the bottom, because I noticed they were making a lot of micro adjustments, you know, every hole, the guy was taking lead on putting lead off on every hole. Yeah, I think that's definitely it's to answer your question simply, yes, there's something on the bottom, whether that's the wait for the fly, what we're really, really ultimately looking for contact because of the flow of the water, the difference in flows, right, because of the ripples and the hydrology, we're looking for contact to our bugs. And the way that we get that is a lot of the time with weight, and putting weight on bottom of the rate getting that to the bottom. And the fly. You know, the placement of the fly definitely varies. Depending on the bug in the hat. Sometimes we'll fish them way up off the bottom sometimes, you know, a few infamous, but yeah, we're definitely trying to get to the bottom because you know that it's when the waters flowing, it's flowing. And you know, trout, they're lazy, they're trying to sit on the couch and exert the least amount of energy. And that's generally the bottom between the crevices behind rocks. So sorry, I don't know, that was a complete answer. But no, no, that's good. You know, that was just my, you know, one day fishermen you guys experienced, but what is the what's sort of like the the drop shot rig that you guys are using there? It's a little different than other places. Yeah, so the drop shot, it was new to me, I came across that from a fella that used to work at the hook, friend of Jonas in mind that we both love. And, you know, we all have our own ways of fishing, the different guides, but we're all we're all accomplishing a similar thing differently. And Mitchell really, really, really, really liked the drop shot like that was just his go to rig. And over my time. You know, my past few years on pens, great. You know, I've done a lot of learning and fishing different techniques and some of the other guys and what we've really found is that that drop shot is universally it's very user friendly. And we can pass it from person to person and it allows us to do a few things and that's get our rig

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To the bottom, and then we can teach the angler to get contact to their rig. So no matter whether we're fishing six inches, or 36 inches, we can get contacts to our flies our way our rigs, right? So we can feel when our reg hits the bottom or a fishy to Yeah, one of the big things that comes up a lot for us is this idea that's very popular right now by Euro nymphing. And one of the real pros of the drop shot rig, or similar rigs, and we use a variety of things, obviously situationally dependent, but you know, you have cider built into your leader, you can fish it with an indicator, you can fish it without an indicator, it is truly versatile in the ways that you can have the clients present it. And it can also be tapered to their skill level very effectively. Drop shot is new to people, like they've heard of these other techniques and we say drop shots. Oh, what is that? Well, you know, the drop shot to me is the weight. But below my flies, I've been fishing the same leader for the past seven years, give or take, you know, and I and there's in the course of a day, I'll have a drop shot on, I'll just rip the weight right off and we'll go to fishing, you know, no way, or wait between the wise and well now we're not dropshot anymore. We're fishing. You know, it's very pigeon holing when we call it drop shot, and what we're really all doing is modern, we're using modern lifting tactic, which is a combination of those Euro tactics, and which is like, you know, weight lead free, so to speak, to drop shotting, which is give me all the lead, right? Okay. It's a very, it's a hybrid, you know, because it's a diverse fishery that calls for different tactics, every time you take a step, whether that's adding a drop shot, or ripping the balloon off, or that's right, you know, presents a scenario. That's why it was so interesting to me how we changed, we literally adjusted the rig, every time we moved, you know, it was gonna fish this hole, and we're gonna move in 15 feet down, and he's grabbed my line and pulled a couple of weights off or put some on and off, we went again, that's the thing that intimidates people and part of why it gets its reputation as a masterclass stream, which it deserves, but that you can't just go do the same thing in every hole, you know, not even close. And if the water level starts to change, like Matt was referring to from 500, cfs to 700 CFS, you've got to change what you're doing, or you will not do, you went out with your guide on a Thursday, and it rained Thursday night, and the water bumped by Friday morning, what you learned the day before, will still work some places, but needs those adjustments to be effective. And there's really only a few adjustments when you break it down and think about that. Like it's very, it's what you were saying like user proof, you know, your adjustments are long amounts of tippet. Weight. And that's all you're really burying. And if you don't mind, I'll focus in on that one word that Matt started with, which is contact. If the angler doesn't know what's happening with their flies, their chances of catching that fish go down dramatically. And the reason why is because a wild trout can breathe in, suck in and blow out something they think they don't want their mouth anymore. And point six seconds. And so that's not very long. And if you're not in contact, you won't know that happened. Matt real quick, just so people understand what exactly when you say dropshot to describe the rig at the at the at the end of the line there. What have you got? What's the setup there? You're gonna have two tags? Well, you're gonna have two different sections, where there's tags coming off, right, right. Yep. All right, trim your other sections. So you've got top fly bottom fly, and you would actually leave that bottom long tag underneath where your bottom fly would go. And we'll just put a little single overhand knot at the bottom of that. So your split shot doesn't slide off of that. I know some people that don't put they won't put it out there because, well, if they get stuck to my split travel slide off. Honestly, people love the drop shot for the theory of well, I'm only going to lose my weight. That hardly ever happens. I almost always lose my bottom flyer or break off higher. Sometimes you get lucky. Yeah, but does that answer you better? Yeah, I was trying to figure out you know, just so people understood. It's like the tag and you're putting the weight on the tag and that's what you guys are doing there. And a lot of the things obviously, let's shift gears just for men.

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Didn't hear love to hear your story. Jonas like. So how did you end up running a flower shop on a fly shop and Coburn, Pennsylvania, it's been 23 years. And I still don't know how it all happens. So I had been raised with it with my dad. And my dad was a flight was a fly fisherman. But by the time I got old enough to go with him, he was too busy with his job and had stopped fly fishing. And one of my buddies from college got me started. And that buddy, and I decided that after college, that we didn't want to have real jobs. And so we were literally in the process of moving to Cleveland, which was his hometown, to open a flower shop there, which is genius, because this was before steelhead. And Cleveland had essentially no fly fishing at all. And in the process of trying to figure out where we were going to go fishing. Once we moved to Cleveland, we found the feathered hook for sale on the fledgling internet. This was the 1996 You couldn't even post a picture, you know. And then we found out an ad that was more similar to a classified ad and decided we will go check it out. And we bought it. So I bought him out after about three months, and I've been there ever since. It has literally my business plan upon arrival was to be a truck been for two and a half years, three years, declare bankruptcy and move back to Seattle to be a grown up. Gratefully, that has not happened. You know, I haven't had to do that. Alright, so Coburn kind of found you that and it's kind of a unique little town. Super old. Right? But small. Yeah. Oh, yeah. 250 people. It was a railroad town. There was a railroad that ran from Lewisburg to Belle fawn. And the only stop on the whole line was Coburn. And it was literally the reason Coburn came into existence. Yeah. And Valley had a large agricultural history, as well as some industrial stuff, a lot of logging and things like that. And 1972 Agnes came through and flooded the town dramatically and washed out the rail line for the last time they decided they didn't need it anymore. And Coburn has been just sort of a quiet mountain town ever since. That's cool. Yeah, it was cool. Working out for you. Right. Got that great little flesh out there. Things could have turned out a lot worse. Yeah. All right. So Matt, what's your story? So you're the You're the head guy working for Jonas, how did that come about?

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It's a great, I know, it's

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because I never applied for the job. Like there was never an application process I never interviewed but yet here I am. Somehow, you got long story short, I had to do an internship to get my diploma. For my recreation management degree. I did that with a salad that used to run the trips for the shop. Through that I ended up actually moving into the bed and breakfast, lived in the bed and breakfast, helped learn how to do drywall my second day there.

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Still doing drywall this day.

38:23

Now,

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it's not

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foreigners, it's just time. So I moved in, started working in the shop after a couple years. myself the younger guides decided with Jeremy has to break off and start our own guide service, the feather took Guide Service and somebody needed to organize the trips, and it seemed that I had I said I'll do it

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where it all started. And it's a small town. You know, Pickens, I love fly fishing, I love the outdoors. And I learned something about experience and providing an experience a memorable experience when I was in college. And I've really tried to bring that to the guide, even what I do. And you know, sharing that with the other guide so that we're all really providing a memorable experience because Penns Creek is something worth remembering that something worth bearing in the not just keeping to ourselves. And you know, I enjoy doing that and I enjoy getting to take new people fishing and people fishing again and just experiencing all the beauty and, you know, glory of the place. And thanks Greg, of everyone who works at the feathered hook. Matt isn't the only one of us using his college degree.

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I mean, I have a degree in anthropology. Tess has a degree in agronomy, Darren has a degree in civil engineering. Ashton Boone has a degree in marketing and finance. Matt has a degree in something that literally applies to what we're doing recreation tourism management. There you go. How about that? Is that why you were laughing a little while ago Jonas when he was telling the story.

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Absolutely, absolutely. It's great. You know, I mean, I got to be there for maps transition from the very end of college into adulthood, you know, and like, Okay, what do I do now? And I said, Well, why don't why don't you live here? Then? We have a phone, we have a phone line, you'll be okay. Yep. So mine that worked. So that was important. So it evolved into a job. All right. So I gotta ask you guys, I found walking into your fly shop was was quite an experience that you have, like, I think all fly shops have a vibe. You know, sometimes in the morning, it's that vibe, anticipation and excitement are about the day on the water. How would you guys describe the vibe in your shop? It's a vibe for sure. I was thinking about that before we called in a reverence is the word that I came up with. It is my strongly held opinion that fly fishing takes itself too seriously. And that that's ridiculous. And that we're really all just supposed to be going fishing and having a good time. And some people don't like that some people come to the feathered hook, and they want it to be super serious. And that's just not my nature. I am not a super serious person. And I think the thing is, is that you can come to the feathers hook and get all the right information, and all the details that are working, and all the directions to where we think you should go or where you want to go. Okay, but we're going to do it in a ridiculous joking manner. And if it has to be, I don't care what kind of waiters you're wearing, right? If they're bad waiters that you bought at Walmart, right? Or they're the nicest waiters I've ever seen. And they were custom made for you. That's all well and good. But our job is to go fishing. Let's just go fishing and have a good time. You might call out those bag waiters on the guy I noticed when you go out either end.

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Right, exactly. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of the people appreciate is that you don't get to walk in looking like the latest Orvis catalog printing in your Land Rover Range Rover, whichever one's more expensive. Both of them out of my pressuring. Right. And nor nor do you get judged if you showed up in a truck that it's last gasp will be this track. If you're coming to go fishing and to make memories, we take that just as seriously as you do. But it should be fun. We're all about it. Yeah. Matt, would you add anything to that? Final word? It should be fun. Okay, we'll stay with that. That's great. All right, real quick. You've got a new lodge opening up. He said on Pine Creek, right. What's When's that going to be open? Was it Pine Creek? Yeah, so there's nine pine trees in Pennsylvania. We're on Pine Creek, which is in Coburn, as opposed to Pine, which is an hour and a half from us in the gorge, which is known as Big Pine Creek, but it also has a little Pine Creek attached to it. So whatever is our latest adventure, the feather hook has been there for 32. I've had it for 23 years and opportunity came up for us to expand in a way that offered bountiful opportunities to the entire experience, more rooms, it's on 99 acres. It has a mile of private water running through it on a Class A wild trout stream. That is absolutely fantastic fishing. And it's very scenic. It's extremely secluded. And our hope is that just allows us to sort of broaden the net we cast in the fly fishing community to help more people have good times. That sounds great. I can't wait to see it. So let me ask you what, what's what either of you what was your most memorable fish? I would say I know mine. I know mine. So it's year two for me feathers hook and it was late May and the green Drake was coming off the eastern green Drake, which is crazy, famed for uptimes Creek as the single largest Eastern green drink hatch left in the United States. And the bug is enormous. The female is a size two for extra long, which for a novice is about two and a half inches long. And the male is much smaller about a 10 two extra long, which is about an inch, inch and a half. And that hatch generally speaking starts in the evening, late afternoon not like not like the the Eastern green Drake is the second largest may fly in the United States. After only

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what are the columns? The hat Yeah, the hex Yeah, exactly. Thank you in Michigan, and generally speaking, it starts in the late

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Afternoon early evening and goes well into dark. But if the water is muddy, here's the secret. If the water is muddy, and it's overcast, that the green drink will start much earlier in the day, it was about two in the afternoon. And I was standing on the bridge wondering if I was going to go out of business because it had rained so much that the creek was muddy. And most of the people that were there, I had checked out because of the water conditions, I did not thoroughly understand them at the time enough to help them catch fish. And I closed the store because I was standing on the bridge and Coburn. And the green drinks were pouring off and I thought of what a waste it was for them to be coming off when the fish can't see them. And the fish started to absolutely destroy them. One of the things we don't think about a lot is that the brown trout or the trout in the stream, is the apex predator in that stream. As far as fish go, yeah. And they have developed a variety of strategies to allow them to eat bugs, and other fish and so on. And that lateral line that goes down the side of their body that allows them to feel what's happening matters when it comes to the green drink. The green drink is a big enough bug and makes enough commotion in attaching process that they were absolutely able to locate those bugs in water ski that was so muddy that if you stuck your hand, one inch under the water, you couldn't see anything.

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And the fish started to crush the bugs. And I went back to the shop and I closed immediately and put a gone fishing sign up in the window. And I walked down around to the bridge and caught 18 and three quarter inch brown trout. But the critical issue was that if you dead drifted your fly, they had no idea was there. And I watched as those green drinks struggled to get out of their shuck, and through that surface film to hatch out. And if they were struggling, they got eaten. And if they were floating motionless, they got through no problem at all. I started to twitch and jiggle my bug. There's a great book fishing the dry fly as a living insect. And I was jiggling my bug, and if I jiggled it, they destroyed it. And that fish taught me more about Penns Creek, that conditions the environment and what a fish was a trout was capable of. And then I had probably learned in my eight years of fly fishing before that. It was a truly, truly monumental moment for me. How's it 18 inch brown trout out of pinch Creek fight? Oh good, especially in high water.

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Yeah, real, real good rip you up and down the pool. And so of course, we all know this, that brown trout hate the sun. Right and will spend a lot of their day, you know, pinned to the bottom during a sunny day. Anglers love a sunny day, but the trout don't. When it is hard, overcast and murky, muddy water. Those trout act like it's nighttime, and therefore are not afraid that a raptor bird is going to come pluck them out of the stream. And they get drunk it would be the easiest way to it is last call at the bar. Right? It is trout making decisions that they would not normally make when you can still see them. Right. And because of that, they were quite surprised to get hooked that day. Right and overly ambitious in their attempts to get free. All right, one more question. You guys funniest moment in your shop? Matt, did you want to tell your trout short? No, no, I was you'd have a better shot moment. I'm sure. This is a tricky one. Because we have a lot of funny moments in the shop. It's too many. How do you how do you write them?

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My favorite funny story is it's October of probably just, I would say five or six years ago and I was working the shift. And no one had been in all debt. An old man comes walking in. And when I say old I mean this guy. This guy had met Jesus personally. And he came in and he started asking me what flies were coming off, which is my job. And so I took them over the firebox and I started showing him what flies were coming on. And he looked stops me dead. And he looked me in the eye and he says, no, no, no. You tell me what one fly I need. And I said, Sir, that's a difficult question. And we were talking about it a little bit. I said, Well, okay, this would be the fly. I would pick if I had to pick one fly. And he said, Okay, I'll take two of those. And I said to him as we got through the register. I said to him, I said, Sir, do you mind for my own learning? Why it is that you stopped me while I was going through the hatchet.

50:00

that are coming off and told me to pick one fly. And he said, I know how you fly shop people work. And I said, Oh, this is about to get good. And I leaned in and I said, Okay, how do we work? And he said, here's what you do. You wait until somebody like me who doesn't know the area comes in, and then you sell us all the flies you can't sell.

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I said, I said, oh, oh, that's interesting. That's a good idea. And I said to him, I said, this is really the moral of the feathered hook to me. I said to insert, even at your age, it serves me better, to tell you the truth, on the off chance that you might go out there and actually catch a trout. And think to yourself, you know what, that fly shop told me the truth, I'm gonna go back there, as opposed to your theory, which is that I just dumped a bunch of product on you, I couldn't get rid of, you go out and don't catch any fish, and never come back here. You never come back here because you assume that's how we roll. So I wish you the best of luck, right? I hope that guy was just having a bad day, or whatever, it doesn't matter.

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I mean, it's just the nature of retail. But the point is, is that, although now in hindsight, that may not actually be that funny of a story. But the point is, is why if we all just go to work, to earn a living, it's not very fulfilling, right? I mean, I don't want to speak for Matt, right. But for myself, on those days that I go to work, and I worry about how much money we make. I generally speaking, have a bad day at work. But when I go to work, and I can really stay focused on trying to help people have the best vacation day they can have, and really enjoy themselves the most they possibly can. I have great days at work. I haven't had to go get another job. Since I've taken that attitude. That's a great attitude. All right. So guys, let's let's walk through the seasons on Penn's Creek, like give us a sense of, you know, what are the major hashes and you know, how are you sort of targeting fish at different times of the year? So, by its nature, it's a bug factory. This is how I want to phrase it. We have multiple hatches that year that are considered super hatches, like National Geographic. Oh, my God, I've never seen anything like that. Did the water level just go down with how many bugs just crawled out? Kind of hatches? How do you know you're in a super hatch? Right? It's the question I have to deal with, even though they don't know the question to ask all the time. Right? The answer is, if you look upstream at your friend and say, This is insane, and didn't eat three bugs during that comment. You are not in the Super hatch. All right.

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You have not seen the beak of it. If the bugs are crawling behind your sunglasses and trying to impregnate your eyeballs. You are in it.

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When you when you get home that evening, if you do not have to wash your rod off, because you did not kill hundreds of bugs with in your casting stroke. You were not in it. Okay? Okay. All right. That's important to set up. We have good hatches, great hatches and super hatches. Let's go over a few of them. We're gonna start in February with midges and bluing olives. All right, that's gonna go that way through March. We get good dry fly activity that that time of the year because fish as the water starts to warm up, the fish get really hungry, because that's how metabolisms work. All right, if you're a cold blooded creature, we slide into April, we get a really good Hendriksen and Quill Gordon. There's also a red arrow mixed in there and something they call the iron product or that I think is the quote board that starts in the first week of April and and will continue to about the third maybe even into the fourth week of April depends on the year. The Grantham cactus is our first super hatch of the year. And that starts historically speaking around Tax Day, April 15. That might be a few days earlier. That is one of those hatches that you think here's this is, maybe this is too much bugs, right? Which is something that Matt can probably speak to more effectively than I can. You can add time at Penn's Creek have too many bugs on the water. Oh, I'm sure yes, it's bringing up fish. But why would the IRS when they have 100,000 Other to choose from? Well, let's talk about let's talk for just for a second about that. Matt, what do you think about that? What do you what how do you guide your clients when you've got 100,000 bugs on the water? You pick one fish at a time? That is right, you just have to key in because

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When you've got so many bugs, the fish like Jonah said before they just get drunk, and anglers are like, Ooh, look at this one, look at this one. And they make a cast that one fish, and then they don't get their flight doesn't get eaten in and other fish eats two feet away. So they pass that one. And next thing you know, they're just catching every single fish. But the key is, is to take one fish in, get the right Katsina angle, like don't just run out to them, you know, think about it for half of a second, just get the right approach I like to get just above the fish. What, because the water, the color of the water allows that generally and the flow of the water allows you to get close. And if you can get just above them, you know, there are 15 foot casts in there, talk a little min upstream and you just float the bug to them. And my cadence is I like to I like to land the fly where I can count one or 321 Eat it 123 Go again. So that's where I tell my anglers. Cat. Cool, man 321 Eat it 123 Go again. 321 Eat it 123 Go again, if you're letting your fly go any longer, you're wasting time. If you're landing upstream of that, there's too much water for you. You're gonna have to mend again. That's a way if you're going any longer. You might catch a fish they love. I mean, how germs how many fish have you caught on on a skating Grantham? Most of them are like, correct. So I'm not gonna say, you know, maybe for the Grantham that's an exception.

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Might say you're right, you know, scat, you know, skated at the end. But for for the other bugs, you know, 321 Eat it 123 Go again. Because I'm targeting one fish. There is one fish in this creek. And until he rises to you're not until he rises until he eats it. We're not moving on. Because he's gonna eat it. You know, I've got a bug in my box, and he's gonna eat it. That's great tip. And, you know, I don't want to I don't want to say every single fish we've ever fished there

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we go out on me. You know, it's alright, man. What about you? Did you say you set up above the fish or you're doing a downstream presentation? Yeah, I just slightly above the problem is that if you get below the fish, your flyline is on the water. Maybe Elena is pulling your fly downstream. And when that fish eats, you might hook him once in a while you'll do okay. Right? You'll do okay. But if you're looking for like high percentage, I like to get just slightly upstream of them depending on the flow, where I can land my fly the third just a little bit of an upstream end. So that when my when they come up and eat it, you know all I'm doing. I'm not, you know, raising my rod to the sky. I'm just just lifting the fish takes out the slack. Women eat it. Okay, so you're actually at to the side of the fish slightly upstream. You're not actually casting downstream to the fish. You're just upstream a little bit slightly up. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I got you know, I thought you're saying that downstream. All cats are fishing straight downstream. And me though. I have no problem. And that's a great graph. But you're talking about basically being being parallel but just above it. Yeah, exactly. Okay, that makes sense. No, I gotcha. The next of our super hatches is the Mark Brown. And that'll start either in the very end of April, the very beginning of May. That will depend on what the winter did are March Brown is gigantic. It's about a 10 to extra long, maybe even an eighth. The spinner is definitely an eight to extra long. The thing about the march Browns that is amazing is that they have longevity to in states. We're going to get them from the end of April into the first or maybe even second week of June depending on the year. Nice. It is not a super thick hatch, like the green drink will be or the Grantham was but it's every day and it's consistent. It is a wonderful bug to fish because it's gigantic. And I can still see it even at my advanced age. It is appears to be one of the fish's favorite bugs in that they will swim across the pool to eat one. The reason we know that there are so many of them hatching throughout the day. Even though you any of us may only see a few dozen there are a few 100 is because in the evening, the spinners come back and cloud the sky. If you have seen footage of the B 17 bombers over Germany, in the war, flying in that beautiful formation. That's what it looks like in the evening. The sky is filled with them and if you've never seen March brown spinners

1:00:00

They fly at almost all at exactly the same height. And they cruise back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And as the temperature drops, they dropped. And if you're there on a night when the spinners hit the water, it's like someone pushed go on the Cuisinart. It's amazing.

1:00:21

But it doesn't happen every night. It's temperature controlled. If it gets cold too fast, they'll go back to the truth. They live almost. They can live up to seven days, which gives them something that a lot of mayflies don't have, which is choices. Right. Everybody got them? Yep. Right. And the result of that is that, let's say on average, every three days they come down, but when they do it through credible, right, yeah, that's cool. That will bleed into the first week of May, we start to get sulphurs. We get a lot of things that we call soapers. The entomologist have a lot of names for what we get. We have at least three species of sulfur. Greg Hoover, the entomologist at Penn State says he believes that there are probably a dozen things that could be labeled sulfur in the creek, we will start off with a 12 they will get progressively slower about or progressively smaller about once a week, and they're going to become 14 and then 16 and then 18. And deeper into the summer we get a second brood that the 20. The sulfurs will be incredibly thick at times, the 14th and the 16th are the sickest of them. And that would be the

1:01:39

whatever we want to call it the mainstay of May, March Browns sulphurs. Are their blue quills are their blue dots. Are their blooming olives coming off? Absolutely. Are there four different kinds of candidates coming off simultaneously? Are there three different crane flies coming off? Absolutely. stone flies have a variety of sizes. My favorite being a Western kid is the giant salmon fly. It is Terran Narcissus Americana versus Tara narcissist or SATA, the famous one from out west fish don't know Latin, so that works out great for most people. And then that all leads to the crescendo, which is our eastern green Drake, which I told you about before. That is somewhere between 14 and 21 days long. It is unusual in that it moves up the stream based on water temperatures, and it moves about three miles a day, on average, outside temperature, water temperature affects the speed of that pretty dramatically. It could bring it to a direct halt. It could burst it up the stream 10 miles and over in one day. And then we slide into our summer hatches. And we get great summer hatches all summer long. We got the light Cahill the slate Drake, which is more commonly known as ice Nichia. We had Tricos we had reoccurrence of the sulfur midges. And then the terrestrial fishing gets really good. And then we slide into the fall and do it all over again. Nice. I just read an article that about a guy who said he was standing on the shoreline trying to figure out what to tie on. And he saw six fish rising. And he's pretty sure each fish was you know, taking a different bug. And I thought, you know, like Matt, how do you how do you guide? In those kinds of scenarios? You end your day at 5pm?

1:03:35

Definitely, I remember being out with a couple of the guides, like five years ago, April 30. And there was 13 different types of bugs in the air. And it's it's how do you pick? That's a great question. So the answer is, is you can't pick a bug to fish if you don't have it in your box. And if you're dumb depends great. You need to do your research and figure out what bugs are going to be hatching. And then you need to prepare appropriately. And that means you either need to tie the flies or you need to buy them and you need to be prepared. Like if you're coming at the end of April, then you need to have all of the bugs that could be happening from the end of April into the beginning of May because the one bug that you don't have is the one that they're going to be eating that day.

1:04:29

course that's true. That's how it goes. You know I carry entirely too many flies. It's because you never know what they're gonna want today. serve you well. All right, Matt, what is what is the hardest thing for your clients to grasp? Typically when they come to Penns Creek, hardest thing to grasp over all maybe it's a technique maybe it's just a mindset. I don't know. I think it's the mindset honestly just having confidence as an angler because we're giving them the

1:05:00

right tool and the you know, the crank set up that we use day to day and it's proven to work. We know how to make it work, and they just need to have confidence in themselves to follow through with it and set the hook believe that there's going to be a fish there. You know, I can't tell you how many actually this is a good story. I love to fish really fast river water, not just me, we love to fish fast river water. And there's a lot of folks who just don't think the brown trout lived there because rainbow trout like fast water, brown trout like deep slow water. So we'll fish the ripple and they'll hook a fish and I'll look at them. And I'll say, do you think you're gonna have to fish there? In that scenario? They love to say, Oh, my God, I can't believe we got to brown here? Or will we fit in a bucket? And I'll change the fly and they'll make an adjustment. And we'll catch a fish and I'll look at him and say, Do you think we're gonna get one there? And they're like, Nope, just, you know, lack of competence in themselves or not believing, you know, like, the fish is there. We have the right tools we, you know, have an idea of what we're doing and you just got to be competent. That's great answer. All right. What are your what are your top five? Oh, here, there's going to be a really hard question. Because there's so many flies you need to have. But do you have some flies that are sort of confidence but like in terms of patterns, like what what are some of your top patterns, sizes, colors, that kind of thing? Absolutely. So golden stone flying them. Red Frenchie in a size 14 or 16 Golden stone playing infants huge by the way. It's like an eight, an iron lotus or anything for a blue wing all of them. Size 16 or 18. A bushy cactus in a size 14. And some kind of my personal is a cut wing blue quills size 18 one of our local guys Todd ties them up and I haven't found very many fish that will say no to that.

1:06:54

Would you guys be willing to pop me over some pictures of some of those top flight patterns. I'd love to stick those out on the destination angler Facebook and Instagram site if you guys are cool with that. I'm sure we can get that done. Yep, I'll get that taken care of. Yeah, that'd be great. Any other flies you like? Maddie, do yours? I love a Catskill style March Brown.

1:07:15

I favorite dry fly. There are lotus and sexy waltz where ghosts actually walked out of that that will cover my bases. Are you good? Alright, so one more question. I always like to ask my guests what give us a couple of really great places anglers can go at the end of the day for cold beer in a in a great sandwich or somebody. We really have three choices in our area. There's a pizzeria in town called the OIP. The original Italian pizza. You cannot get a beer there, but the sandwiches are good. You can bring your own. You can bring your own beer. You can go to the middle Haim Hotel, which will give you a real feel for what Penns Valley is like but the burgers are good and the beer is cold. We also have the Oak Creek Cafe, which is absolutely fantastic. It's a local microbrewery. And they have a wonderful chef and the beer is top notch indeed. In fact, rookie brown Yeah, that's a beer style. beer style. Yeah. Okay, very good. You guys, thank you so much for being on the podcast is great having you guys. How can people get in touch with you? They can get to Jonas at the feathered book.com Or they can get us on social media at the feathered hook fly shop. We'll put that on our show notes. So people can give you guys call and find out you know whether that pinch Creek his fish unwell or not? Yeah, and we'll put some pictures of those top flies on her Facebook and Instagram page. Thanks everybody for listening. In I wish you two guys extraordinary success and all you're doing and your fishing adventures to follow.

You guys can email me with your comments and suggestions at shaigh50@gmail.com

As always Our music is by brothers fountain hope you enjoyed the show. We'll see you again soon.