Pennsylvania

Limestone springs, wild browns, and the birthplace of American technical fly fishing.

Pennsylvania is where American technical fly fishing was figured out. The Cumberland Valley limestone streams — the LeTort, Big Spring, Falling Spring — are where Marinaro, Fox, Shenk, and the rest of the post-war generation worked out how to fish flat water, terrestrials, and the small mayflies that defined modern dry-fly thinking.

It is also the densest concentration of wild brown trout water east of the Mississippi. PFBC manages more than 4,000 miles of designated Class A Wild Trout streams — small, cold, often-overlooked water that exists because PFBC's wild-trout-first management philosophy has held the line for decades.