Joe Humphreys: A lifetime on the creek

Ed Mahon

COLLEGE TOWNSHIP — In the late 1970s Joe Humphreys showed Jimmy Carter how to nymph fish. It’s one of the more challenging fly fishing techniques, since the fly is under water and very small, but Humphreys said the former United States president was in familiar territory.

CDT/Michelle Bixby

Champion fly fisherman Joe Humphreys stands on the boardwalk along Slab Cabin Run near the beginnings of his fishing career during the Spring Creek Day family festival Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009. CDT/Michelle Bixby

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“He said learning to nymph fish was like, at the time, dealing with Congress. ... It was difficult,” said Humphreys, who fished with Carter in Spruce Creek.

Nevertheless, they pulled in some brown trout.

Humphreys, 80, caught his first fish at the age of 6 in Spring Creek, and his first trout using a fly a few years later.

He’s a nationally known fisherman, conservationist, author, and educator, whose pupils have included Penn State students, retired basketball coach Bobby Knight. actor Liam Neeson and former Vice President Dick Cheney who was the U.S. Secretary of Defense at the time.

Whenever he teaches a lesson he focuses on three key parts: casting, line control and understanding entomology of the stream. He’s never felt intimidated instructing celebrities or world leaders, he said.

“There’s no pretense, no nonsense,” said Humphreys, “and on a trout stream with a friend, there’s a lot of bonding.”

Humphreys was honored Sunday with the Spring Creek Heritage Award at the Millbrook Marsh Nature Center as part of Clear- Water Conservancy’s Spring Creek Day Family Festival.

The award is sponsored by ClearWater Conservancy and the Spring Creek Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

“He’s really been able to kind of take what he’s learned all over the world, and help us here locally with the protection of our most special resource, Spring Creek,” said Jennifer Shuey, ClearWater’s executive director.

As a child, Humphreys would ride his bike from his home at the corner of Beaver and Atherton streets to Spring Creek.

“I grew up here, and this stream was my classroom,” he said.

He graduated from State College Area High School in 1947, served in the U.S. Navy from 1948 to 1952, and then graduated from Penn State in 1957.

He coached wrestling and taught physical education and history classes at high schools in Penns Valley for two years, Kittanning for four years and Bald Eagle Area for seven years.

Then from 1970 to 1989 he was director of the Penn State’s angling program.

In the early 1970s he founded the Spring Creek Chapter of Trout Unlimited, which now has about 350 members. He still fishes at the spot.

“This is limestone country. ... In limestone waters you have a prolific amount of insects, so it makes a lot of good trout chow,” he said.

Ed Mahon can be reached at 231-4619.