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3. Donegal Spring Creek

Parked at the lower end near the concrete bridge and fished my way upstream to about 50 yards below the quarry. Fished from 12:30 - 4:30. Saw good numbers of Ep. invaria but not a single rise, also saw some caddis. Landed a dozen, six pretty and colorful rainbows and six browns of which four looked wild. Two of them had to be stream born as they were only 4" - 5" long. Caught all the fish on either a #12 BH Green Weenie or a #16 copper Copper John with a poxy wing case. Weather was quite windy and a little chilly. Virtualy all the fish were caught in the riffly water - no hits or fish in the slow water. Lots of wood in the water and snags on underwater branches happen frequently. All the rainbows were between 10" and 12", fun afternoon but stream is still best fished with as little wading as possible to keep downstream silting to a minimum.

Some of the rainbows in that stream are wild also. I haven't fished it much in recent years, but was out last fall teaching a colleague to fish and we caught several wild bows as well as some wild browns. Plenty of stocked fish in Donegal, but some reproduction too!

The rainbows didn't look like any PFBC rainbows I've ever caught. I wish I'd taken a picture of one of them to post. They all appeared to be females as they had small mouths but they were only 10" - 11" anyway so maybe the mouth structure is the same for both sexes at that size. The red stipe was very evident. It is bright red and about 3/4" wide. Is Donegal stocked with any coop fish or private hatchery fish? That might explain the appearance of these rainbows.

BTW I see Louis had a letter to the eidtor published in the most recent issue of FFM.

Here is a picture of a rainbow with the colors of the Donegal fish the only difference is this fish is 20".