Fly Fishing Championship

Bellefonte, PA — Top competitive fly anglers from the U.S. and Canada will be in the area this month for a three-day national championship tournament simultaneously supplementing local tourism.

The U.S. National Fly Fishing Championship is now taking place Oct. 24- 26 on Centre County’s blue ribbon Spring Creek.

The organizing committee is headed by John Ford, a retired State College Area teacher, the Central Pennsylvania Convention and Visitors Bureau and David Rothrock, president of the state council of Trout Unlimited.

Ford said 50 people, emerging from playoff-like tournaments in Montana, Michigan and elsewhere in the country, will compete over the three-day weekend, arriving with family members and tournament judges, biologists and controllers. The weekend’s top five scorers will go on, Olympics-like, as Team USA to a world championship tournament in Poland next summer.

It’s the first time that the national championship has been held in central Pennsylvania trout streams, Ford said, though he organized the World Youth Fly Fishing Championship on Spring Creek and three other local venues in August 2007.

Is fly fishing really a competitive sport? Will spawning fish be impacted?

Inquiring minds want to know.