Blake Gross went fishing Saturday on Fishing Creek in Etters. You could say he had a pretty good day.
And that was even before he caught the big one.
Shortly after 9 a.m., casting a spinner into the pool by some bushes on the opposite bank, he snagged a nice sized palomino trout, a cross between a rainbow and a golden trout stocked by the state Fish & Boat Commission. They are difficult to catch and aren't exactly common. Some anglers go all their lives never catching one. Blake caught two Saturday, including that 16-incher.
It might have been an omen, a sign that something special was going to happen.
And it did.
Not long after catching the palomino, he cast to the bank and hooked a rainbow - a big one.
'I knew there were some big fish in there'
Blake is 12, a sixth-grader at Shallow-Brook Intermediate in Manchester, and he is already a veteran angler. He began fishing with his grandfather and father when he was 2, going to Pinchot Park to fish for sunnies. He once caught 40 sunnies in one day, his mother Stacie said.
He has caught some big fish in the past, mostly carp in the Susquehanna River. But nothing like the fish he landed on Fishing Creek.
He likes fishing for trout on Fishing Creek. It's not far from his home in Mount Wolf, and the stream is stocked well by the state. "The last two years," he said, "I knew there were some big fish in there."
And on Saturday, the Fish Commission's pre-season Youth Trout Day, he caught one.
A big fish, but not a record
He cast to the far bank again, still using a spinner, when he felt the bite.
He knew immediately it was a massive trout, he said. "I didn't know it was in there," he said. "I think it was in there the last two years." But he said he didn't see it until it was on his line.
The rainbow put up a fight, he said. He had the drag on his reel pretty tight and the trout sharply bent his rod. "I thought my rod was going to snap," he said. "I thought I was going to lose him."
After about 15 minutes, he said, he landed the trout on the bank. He was astonished by its length. "It was the size of my arm," he said. "We could barely get him in the cooler; its tail was hanging out."
The trout was 23-inches long and weighed 5.2 pounds, he said.
While it's a large trout, it wasn't a state record. Rainbow trout typically grow to be between 14 and 20 inches; a 23-inch rainbow is considered a trophy-sized fish, according to the Fish Commission. This year, according to the commission's ...
