“This is a beautiful area and a nice stream,” Knight said. “I couldn’t be happier.”

Knight had placed third during the morning’s competition on Spring Creek and had just landed his fifth brown trout on the Little Juniata River. The number of trout caught and your relative rank is often how one defines happiness in the world of competitive fly fishing.

Randy Hanner, also from Colorado, caught three Little J trout during the opening minutes of the session, but then hit a long dry spell. He was fishing deep water using streamers and nymphs.

Brett Bishop, a high school English teacher from Boise, Idaho, was happy, too. Fishing upstream from Knight and Hanner, Bishop had just landed trout No. 14, and he had another 25 minutes to fish during session four. By the end of the three-hour session, Bishop had a session-high tally of 16 brown trout caught and released on the river. Hanner and Knight each totaled eight trout for third and fourth place, respectively. When compared to the other 40 anglers, Bishop still had the session high, Hanner was in 11th place and Knight was in 16th.

The fly fishermen earned the right to compete in this tournament through their performance in regional contests. Placing in the nationals would largely, but not totally, determine whether they would earn a place on the USA Fly Fishing team.

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Four area streams, offering various sizes and complexities, were fished during the five, three-hour sessions of the competition — the Little Juniata River, Penns Creek, Fishing Creek and two sections of Spring Creek. As a surprise to tournament organizers and many anglers, it was the Little Juniata River that produced the highest number of trout and consistently the best action. Spring Creek proved to be the second best stream.

This was the first time that a national adult fly-fishing tournament came to Pennsylvania. According to tournament chairman John Ford of State College, even the heavy rain last Friday night and Saturday did not hamper the tournament’s success.

“These guys are used to fishing in adverse conditions. It kept the total number of trout caught down, but let the fishermen show how good they really are,” Ford said. “Hosting an event like this in Centre County adds to the attraction of our streams as a fly fishing destination.”

River levels on all contest streams greatly affected fishing success. Even though it was raining, most anglers were greeted with fishable water levels for at least half an hour on Saturday morning. Fishing the Little J on Saturday morning, Utah angler Lance Egan caught two trout quickly and ended up with first place for session one on that stream. That advantage, gained during difficult fishing conditions, helped him to win a national silver medal.

Although fishing continued throughout the day on Saturday, more than two inches of precipitation quickly put an end to the catching. According to John Maciejczyk, an assistant judge on the Little J, the river flow at the Spruce Creek gauge was approximately 125 cubic feet per second on Friday. By noon on Saturday, the volume had swollen to 11,000 cfs, and only one trout was caught during the entire afternoon session. By Sunday, the river was down to 500 cfs and again fishable.

When all of the lines had been reeled in and the fly rods returned to their cases on Monday afternoon, Egan had finished in second place, Bishop was sixth and Knight finished in 23rd place. George Daniel of Lock Haven, the only Pennsylvania angler in the competition, was the gold-medal winner.

During the five competitive sessions, Daniel had chalked up only one first-place finish — during session five — but what won the contest was his consistency through four of the five sessions. Fishing the flood-swollen Spring Creek, even Daniel did not catch a trout on Saturday afternoon. Daniel earned second place on Spring Creek, a second place on the Little Juniata, a third place on Penns Creek and a first-place finish on Fishing Creek.

“I used larger streamer patterns because the streams were up and running chocolate,” Daniel said.

Daniel’s most successful fly was a root-beer bugger with pumpkin rubber legs, designed by Maciejczyk, an emergency room physician in State College.

“I was on Penns Creek for session four (Sunday afternoon) and the creek was up so much that I was literally fishing in the woods,” Daniel said. “There is a huge mental component to fly fishing competition, and I knew that the trout were there, and I kept casting into any slack water that I could find. While other anglers get frustrated, I didn’t let the extreme conditions get to me. I kept dead-drifting and slowly jigging my root beer bugger through the chocolate milk-colored water, hoping for a strike.”

Daniel missed a large trout and found himself well into the allotted three hours with zero trout to his credit. However, his persistence and skill paid off. He hooked a nice trout with just 30 seconds left before the session ended, quickly landing the 15-inch brown before time ran out.

“That one trout gave me a third-place finish for that session and probably won the event for me,” he said. “Fishing in tournaments is certainly a combination of luck and skill.”

Tournament statistics

Fifty anglers landed a total of 421 trout. The Little Juniata River produced over 160 trout and was the top stream, followed by Spring Creek and Penns Creek. Clinton County’s Fishing Creek produced the fewest number of trout. Nearly 200 trout (almost half of the tournament total) were caught during session 5, which was held with the tournament’s best water conditions on the morning of Oct. 26. Devin Olsen caught 28 trout, the highest total number of trout caught. He was followed by Mike Sexton with 22 and Lance Egan with 21. Daniel won the event, followed by Egan and New Mexico’s Norman Maktima to round out the top three. Team USA for Poland will include Daniel, Egan, Olsen, Sexton, Anthony Naranja, Pete Erickson and Josh Stephens. Good luck to those gentlemen in Poland.

Mark Nale, who lives in the Bald Eagle Valley, is a member of the PA Outdoor Writers Association. He can be reached at MarkAngler@aol.com