Trout season on a short fuse
Plan the trout trip for April and May, not July. Ralph Scherder of Dark Skies Fly Fishing writes that Tionesta gets one stocking before opening day and only one in season, mainly because it warms so fast in spring, and that he had already seen water temperatures near 70 degrees on the Lynch gauge while he was still fishing it for trout. The USGS temperature record at Lynch over the past 120 days topped out at 31.5 C, about 89 F. After the first warm spell, in his words, Tionesta Creek becomes a primarily warmwater fishery.
What survives goes to the cold. Scherder expects holdover trout to stack at the mouths of tributaries that run cool all year, and he notes that brook trout stocked in small feeders such as Salmon Creek and Bluejay Creek drop into Tionesta after stocking, then work back up those streams as the main creek heats. The bigger creek itself gets mostly browns and rainbows; his party found a pool below big rocks holding rainbows and two palominos.
Sheffield, Lynch and the Route 666 valley
Tionesta Creek forms just south of Sheffield where the West and East branches meet, and together with the West Branch it runs 61.9 miles over a 480-square-mile watershed. Below Lynch, Route 666 shares a national forest valley with the creek for the 15 miles to Kellettville, with small villages and cabin clusters along it. The trout water PFBC stocks is exactly that reach, listed as Tionesta Creek from the South Branch Tionesta Creek to the Kellettville bridge.
Roy Weil's canoe guide notes a Forest Service pull-off about 1.4 miles north of Lynch and puts Minister Creek Campground about halfway between Lynch and Kellettville, which makes it a sensible base. Scherder's advice on this water is to expect strong current in the deep pools and to look for softer side channels behind islands when the main flow will not let a nymph reach bottom.
Kellettville to Nebraska Bridge by boat
Below Kellettville the road leaves the valley and the creek gets quieter. Weil's guide gives the Kellettville to Nebraska Bridge run as 11.4 miles of Class I water with plenty of campsites, the tornado damage from the mid-1980s still visible in the first mile, and the Tionesta Lake flood pool reaching all but the last mile or so at normal pool. The PFBC northwest region reports, carried by On The Water, say this reach is productive for smallmouth bass and muskellunge.
Launch at the Corps of Engineers campground in Kellettville. The PFBC access at Nebraska Bridge requires a registered boat or a launch permit, while the Corps launch near Jug Handle Run requires neither. The same reports mention crappie and catfish from Nebraska Bridge in the evening, with a warning about traffic on the bridge.
The outflow mile below Tionesta Dam
From the base of the dam to the Allegheny River is about a mile, and this is the one piece of Tionesta Creek that PFBC lists as Stocked Trout Waters Open to Year-Round Fishing, from the Tionesta Dam outflow to the mouth. The PFBC reports describe anglers taking muskellunge and walleye from the outflow wall, which calls for a long-handled net, and yellow perch from the eddy by the concrete pier on the campground side. Boats are prohibited from the county bridge upstream to the outflow. Walleye also turn up where the creek meets the Allegheny.
The release gauge for this stretch is USGS 03020000 at Tionesta Creek Dam, not Lynch, and Weil notes it is only meaningful for that last mile. Watch for the low-head dam in the Allegheny below the mouth, on the left side of the island.
Which rules apply where on Tionesta
Above Kellettville you are on stocked trout water under the statewide calendar: closed from February 16 until 8 a.m. on opening day, April 4 this year, then a five-trout, 7-inch limit through Labor Day, September 7, and a three-trout limit in the fall and winter extended season. The outflow mile stays open all year under the same size and creel limits. A trout permit is required in both.
For the warmwater fish, the bass calendar has three parts: a no-harvest spawning window from April 11 to June 12, a summer limit of six at 12 inches until the end of September, and four at 15 inches for the rest of the year. Muskellunge are open year-round at 40 inches, one a day. Walleye are 15 inches, six a day, and closed from March 15 through May 1. PFBC advises no more than two meals a month of smallmouth bass or any suckers from the SR 0666 bridge at Henrys Mills down to the dam, because of mercury.
What the Lynch gauge is telling you
USGS 03017500 at Lynch drains 233 square miles and sits in the middle of the stocked water. No shop publishes a wading range for it, so the 100 to 400 cfs on this page comes from the USGS daily record back to 1939: median flow is about 410 cfs in May, 180 in June and under 100 from July through October. Recent USGS readings put 2.0 feet on the staff at roughly 406 to 432 cfs, so for wading you want the gauge below about 2 feet.
Paddlers want the opposite. Weil says the section above Lynch needs more than 2.8 feet, about 890 cfs, which happens only 12 percent of the time. No hatch chart has been published for Tionesta itself; the table here uses Pennsylvania-wide timing, and in practice the spring trout window rarely lasts past the Sulphurs.