Black Hills Spear fish or Needles?

If you could only do Spear fish or Needles, which one is more fun/scenic? 

Probably look for sport/top rope in the 5.9-5.11c range.

Not sure if I'll have time to do both within a week.

Spearfish is ‘standard’ limestone pocket climbing goodness. Similar to shelf road, ten sleep, wild Iris, etc. Great climbing in a great setting with lots of variety at each crag. Sport climbing at its best!

The needles are adventurous one-of-a-kind climbing on striking features requiring routefinding, runouts, and some slab skills. You will get lost trying to find routes and you probably won’t climb nearly as many pitches as you expect but every pitch will be memorable.

I guess it just depends what you are looking for! 

The Needles at Sylvan Lake are an historical climbing area, a German climbing guide to the US compared it to Alice in Wonderland and a must stop on the US tour. When I lived there in the early 90's it was a thing to see a pair of front range climbers roll in and do all ten of the 10 pins in a day. Greg Crouch wrote an article for Alpinist https://shop.holpublications.com/products/alpinist-magazine-issue-74?variant=39864443175104 On the way back down the hwy stop and boulder the Gill route on the Thimble, or climb the Needles Eye. Pretty sure some of them did this a weekend flash road trip.

Spearfish sport climbing started in the early 90's when Pete deLannoy moved there. My memory is that it was billed as safer then the High schoolers trying to solo scramble out of the entire chossy canyon. There was at least one rescue, two brothers started up one fell and died the other just sat on a ledge waiting, to die or be rescued. Wear your helmets Spearfish Canyon climbing areas are generally on limestone and the climbing is considered world class. Rock on the climbing routes are generally secure; however, rocks do commonly fall from the hillsides above the cliffs. 
I snagged that last bit from https://www.bhpioneer.com/local_news/rc-woman-killed-in-climbing-accident/article_4089a3ea-223c-11ed-ac53-f31dc2bda92d.html

With a week you should have time to hit the Needles of Rushmore as well, similar to the State Park but without the memorable run outs.  

Both are good but pick the needles. Climb at sylvan lake and cathedral spires. They are only about 15 min drive from each other and both offer tons of multi pitch routes on excellent rock. The spires feel super small diameter for how tall they are. Rap down from the top, walk 10 ft, start the next route. 

if you can find someone local to show you around the needles, definitely do that.  The mt Rushmore needles guidebook is out of print and hard to get you hands on.  mountain project is not bad for the area but it can be very difficult to find climbs and can be rather confusing, expect to spend some time wandering around and it will be more about the adventure than the actual climbing.  mt Rushmore needles is less sandbagged and runout than the Custer needles (different drilling ethics) but the climbs around sylvan lake are super iconic.  there is a guidebook "the adventures of herb and jan conn" that is pretty cool.  if you have not read about these to you should.  they were the OG sd free climbers.  Garfield goes to Washington is a cool route but make sure you walk over to the right area to do the rappels.  waves as also a very fun easy 2 Pitch that gets you to the top of a fin. 

spearfish is beautiful, classic limestone canyon as echoed above. do where your helmet all the time.  we don't need anymore tragedies, with that PSA for wearing helmets in general :) love camping in the campgrounds but lots of free camping in the canyon too.  

60538zero9238 if you want anymore beta :) 

Spearfish is fun sport climbing allthough the climbing mostly gets good at 5.11 and harder. Southern hills is epic adventure trad and also has lots of try hard more scary routes, with good climbs at all grades.