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Clarks Creek
Flowing through a dense forest, Clarks Creek is a freestone stream with a minor influence from the tailwater at Dehart Dam (Harrisburg's water supply reservoir). It has mostly stocked browns, brookies, and rainbows, and some wild brookies and browns, plus a few pickerel. With its canopy of hardwoods and evergreens, there is hardly a place on the stream without overhead cover, which provides some interesting springtime terrestrial fishing.

The stream is known for a green inchworm "hatch" from late May to early June. The worms (#10-#14) appear in the trees and on the water so regularly and in such great numbers that fishermen call this occurrence a "hatch," and the trout become so selective to the worms that anglers without a Green Weenie or suitable inchworm imitation can only hope to take an occasional trout. The fish will even jump out of the water to grab the live worms as they hang precariously by their threads from the hemlock branches. Cast your inchworm patterns under the branches or to sighted trout and fish them with a dead drift.

Clarks Creek is primarily caddis water with occasional hatches from early spring through late summer, but it also has some mayfly hatches (including Hendricksons and March Browns), especially in May and June. Ants and other terrestrials, including large cicada patterns, work well through the summer and into fall. During winter, flashy bead-head nymphs can take fish from the deeper riffles and runs.

The stream has 1.9 miles of delayed-harvest, fly-fishing-only water a few miles north of Route 225. This section is from the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) parking area on Route 325 downstream to the PGC access road at the Iron Furnace.

The entire stream can have crowds from Opening Day to mid-May and the special-regulation water usually has some fishermen throughout the year. But because the stream is wooded and turns frequently, often you don't see other anglers.

To reach the special-regulation water, follow Route 225 north from Dauphin. Immediately after Route 225 crosses Clarks Creek, turn right onto Route 325, which goes to the special-regulation area parking lot (on the right).