Everything That Swims: Stony Creek Trout Tournament

This past weekend, I headed to Pennsylvania with my friend, Devin, who lives in Maryland, to fish a trout derby. We had fished this last year and had a great time, so we decided to do it again this year. The original plan was to camp Friday and Saturday night and fish Saturday and Sunday, but it was pouring rain on Friday night when we arrived, so we got a motel room for the night.
Our alarms woke us up bright and early at 5am, and we were headed to the creek by 5:30. We arrived just before 6 and went to hang out at the creek and wait until fishing started at 8! The Stony Creek Anglers have a private hatchery that they raise fish in and stock a day before the tournament, these fish go anywhere from 10-18" and are mostly rainbows, with some brooks and a few browns. The huge trout however, are bought from a hatchery in New Jersey and brought in on a truck to be stocked an hour or two before the tournament begins. Those fish go anywhere from 20-30+" long and up to 12 or so pounds.
The main problem with fish being brought right off a truck hours before fishing for them, is that they are pretty lethargic and confused, this results in a large number of these huge fish being "lifted" (intentionally snagged near the mouth so it looks like they were caught). Despite our efforts, we were not able to land one of the monsters last year, but really wanted to try for one this year. We could never live with ourselves after snagging a fish like that (or any fish for that matter), so we play by the book.
This year, the water was cloudy on the first day, so many of the big fish were legitimately caught, but overall, fishing on day one was pretty tough, we landed about 25 between the two of us, using both fly and spinning tackle. On the 2nd day, the water cleared up, and the fish fed much better. Devin fished with a fly rod all day, and I stuck with spinning gear. We started out fishing for a 20+" brown left over from the day before, but after 10 minutes without the fish even looking at a bait, I headed for new water, Devin stuck with it though. He ended up hooking the fish for around 10 seconds on an egg pattern, but the fish spit the hook and someone lifted it soon after.
I found a pool that was holding what looked to be a good school of trout holding below some white water, where most people hadn't seen them. I rigged up 2 small split shot and a piece of powerbait on a #14 hook, because the 1/200th/oz mini trout magnet I had been using would definitely not be presentable in that situation. On my first cast, I felt a pretty solid "thump", and set the hook into what I thought was a rock. Well the rock started moving and I realized that I was dealing with a very large brown trout. After about a 5 minute battle that seemed to last forever on 2lb test, I slid my net under the monster brown. The fish ended up measuring 23" in length and weighed 5lbs 1oz, my biggest trout ever (even though it only kind of counts because it was stocked).
Even though it didn't even come close to placing in the tournament, I was still stoked to land such an awesome fish. I had a great day overall, but honestly I didn't care what I caught after landing that fish. My friend Devin still wanted to get a big brown, so we started fishing a big pool with one very nice brown swimming around in it. He found that the fish were hitting a #22 pink midge, and ended up hooking a fish that was at least as big as mine, if not bigger. He fought the fish for at least 5 minutes, on 7x (1.4lb) tippet, and had someone's line wrapped around his the whole time. The fish ended up jumping and spitting the hook mere seconds after landing back in the water, but it was still AWESOME to watch. Even though we had a great day landing between 30-40 fish between the two of us, Devin decided that he WILL be back next year for redemption, hopefully I can join him. Thanks for reading!