Pennsylvania’s Beech Creek winds its way through rugged hills that echo with the bugles of wild elk in the fall and thunder with the gobbles of turkeys in the spring. A mid-sized freestone stream lined with hemlock, rhododendron, and mixed hardwoods, Beech Creek has nearly everything you might hope to find in a trout stream: long riffles, deep pools, cold water, and plenty of in-stream cover.
The only thing Beech Creek lacks as a fishery is, well… fish.
The Beech Creek watershed covers approximately 171 square miles in Pennsylvania’s Centre and Clinton Counties. Located in the bituminous coal fields of central Pennsylvania, much of the watershed was mined long before modern reclamation practices were commonplace. As a result, Beech Creek and many of its tributaries are impaired by abandoned mine drainage (AMD).
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