Penns Creek rises from the great limestone spring at Penns Cave in central Pennsylvania and runs down through a wooded valley as the state's most famous wild-trout river — limestone-fertile up top, freestone-wild as it tumbles into its forested lower gorge below Coburn. It is best known for one thing: the Green Drake, the giant mayfly whose hatch and spinner fall each late May draws fishermen from half the country and turns the river, for a week or two, into a circus of big rising browns and frustrated anglers. The bed is limestone-and-sandstone cobble and ledge; the water is clear, the lower river boulder-strewn and remote where the rattlesnakes outnumber the road crossings. Wading is rocky freestone work, slick in the gorge. Penns is a river of two characters — fertile spring creek and wild mountain freestone — and it rewards the angler who understands which one he's standing in.

Wading: Slick boulders in the remote lower gorge