A Trouts survival in a quarry

[Jessed]

I was swimming in a quarry the other day with a few friends and noticed that this qaurry had a strong temperature change from the edges to the middle(even though the edges were not shallow at all).

At the edge is a steep drop off but the water was warm I'd say upper 70s and in the middle it's like night and day it feels a lot colder. My question is if the deeper the water is the colder it is and if the oxygen levels are better the closer you are too the surface, wouldn't there be a zone in a deep quarry where trout would have cool water and decent oxygen to survive a summer? Have you ever heard of a quarry that could hold trout over a summer in pa?

 

[outsider]

There is a quarry near Myerstown that stays very cold all summer.

 

[rrt]

They used to stock trout in the local Blue Hole, back before I ever began to fish. They survived summers below the thermocline and grew,according to the old timers. But, they had no way to spawn there, I guess, and they died out. There was a nice population of sunfish and a few bass when I was a kid. But, no one has been allowed to swim there for years, except for a scuba club, so I don't know what lives there now.

But, it appears that if a quarry is deep enough and has cold water all summer, the trout can survive but, at least around here, have/had no way to reproduce.

 

[Jessed]

Interesting! If there is no tributary streams for trout to spawn don't they just lay their eggs in the shallows?

 

[ryansheehan]

Yes, but they don't hatch without moving water.

 

[Maurice]

ryansheehan wrote:
Yes, but they don't hatch without moving water.

All they need is oxygenated cold water. As long as there is a water source with enough turnover to hatch the eggs they could spawn. It doesn't have to be very much. If the quarry has cold zones it means there is a source.

 

[Jessed]

That's what I was thinking^ I though maybe there was ground water coming from the bottom

 

[ryansheehan]

If there is not some movement to the water there will not be enough oxygen. Just how much movement I don't know but I can't imagine a quarry will meet that requirement.

 

[Jessed]

Think about the high elevation lakes in the west with no trib streams! The trout find a way to spawn there

 

[ryansheehan]

Brookies don't have the same spawning requirements. Lakes which have wild trout have some sort of moving water, springs would do the trick if the eggs were laid close enough. Everything I've ever studied and read on browns and rainbows say they need to have moving water to oxygenate the eggs. I don't think a rock quarry is going to have a spring but there could be. I would guess that the cold deep water of a rock quarry is actually very low on oxygen. To compare a rock quarry to a glacial lake is apples and oranges. The high elevation lakes have a water source, most of the times from a glacial spring if not fed by a trib.

 

[rrt]

When drained when I was in college, the Blue Hole had only one very modest spring at the bottom of the deepest part (32'). The bottom of the quarry had a coating of green algae, so I guess there was no place/way to spawn. The only shallow place with a little gravel was small, and the sunfish hung out there. It was a nice place to swim when I was young before it was closed to the public -- because of bad behavior by some and, mainly, because of liability issues.

Two other quarries that filled with water: one was apparently polluted by the dumping of black ash at one end of it; the other has changed from a swimming quarry to an empty one, and its water is not as clear as it was when I was young. The first of these was a great place to take kids for sunnies before it became polluted; the other was mainly a swimming hole until about the 1980s I'd guess. It had lots of weekend parties, not good ones, that the state police had to monitor regularly -- not so much any longer.

 

[salmonoid]

Jessed wrote:
I was swimming in a quarry the other day with a few friends and noticed that this qaurry had a strong temperature change from the edges to the middle(even though the edges were not shallow at all).

At the edge is a steep drop off but the water was warm I'd say upper 70s and in the middle it's like night and day it feels a lot colder. My question is if the deeper the water is the colder it is and if the oxygen levels are better the closer you are too the surface, wouldn't there be a zone in a deep quarry where trout would have cool water and decent oxygen to survive a summer? Have you ever heard of a quarry that could hold trout over a summer in pa?

Didn't you have interest in quarry fishing last year?

Swimming in the same one?

 

[Jessed]

Different quarry! I'm pretty sure that quarry has trout in it though!

 

[Mike]

Groundwater: often low in oxygen, high in nitrogen. Often needs to be agitated to blow off the nitrogen and add oxygen.

 

[Jessed]

Is that why most spring fed streams have lots of aquatic plants?

 

[Brandonjseyfert]

Good Evening. Check out limestone springs fishing preserve. It is a trout hatchery in Richland pa. I used to work there right after college. The water that supplies it comes from a quarry with a aquafier over 100' deep. this is the perfect example.

 

[Oregon_OwlII]

Jessed, most of those western lakes are stocked. They were formed during the glacial period (melting of glaciers). No trout endemic to them. In some cases brookies have reproduced after stocking, as well as rainbows in a few cases (if the lake developed an outflow.

 

[Chaz]

There are some spring fed ponds that hold trout through the year. But I won't tell the ones I know.