Greenwood #1 (3/21/21)

As another COVID GOOTH (Get Out Of The House), we headed for Greenwood Furnace State Park for the scenery and a short hike. The park is located about 12 miles by road from Wipple Dam State Park and Stone Valley Recreational Area, which have been topics of other recent blog entries (e.g., 2/9/21, 3/21/21). This is the first of two blog entries based on the visit.

We had not been there for 35 years, the last time I took our son there to go fishing. At least that was the plan. He ended up in the lake, in what looked more like a jump than a slip. In any case, that is water under the bridge, or in the case of the lake, water over the spillway. The classic design and very picturesque spillway on the spring fed lake is made of local stone.

While photographing the spillway a four trucks caravan pulled up to the nearby beach area. It was the DCNR (Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources) there to stock the lake with 500 seven plus inch Brook Tout from the Bellefonte Fishery prior to the beginning of trout season at the end of March. The truck was able to get close enough to be able to transfer the trout from tanks on a truck to the lake via a large hose as the tank drained. The local ranger cut a hole in the 3" ice as fishery workers assembled the hose.

The alternative transfer method would have been to net the fish, put them in 5-gal buckets and form a "bucket brigade" that we and a few other observers might have joined. Only about a dozen fish at the bottom of the tank needed to be transferred by net.