wgmiller
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redietz
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Apparently, though, nothing above I-70 was affected.
JimKennedy
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The hatchery just up from I-70 was unaffected, but its water supply is the spring on the hatchery grounds (I believe the second biggest spring in Maryland). There's a trickle of a stream (still Beaver Creek) that meets the hatchery outflow just upstream from I-70. The small creek flows right between the two industrial / mining sites. A pulse of industrial crud washed into the little creek by a heavy storm could easily have made a mess of things and would not have affected the hatchery.
J
jordan7982
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My brother lives very close to this stream and always wanted to fish it. Sad to hear. I know there's a fly shop along it as well that I also didn't get a chance to stop at yet, but will make it a point to. I'm sure their business will suffer slightly with their main stream not producing well.
sixfootfenwick
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Any news from the investigation?
A
a23fish
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I expect that once DNR determines it isn't a recurring source of whatever killed those fish, they will restock it when the time is right. After all, it isn't much of a trip from the hatchery.
The fly shop was formerly the Beaver Creek Fly Shop, now owned by Precision Fly & Tackle from PA. I still call it the Beaver Creek Fly Shop, and have been in 2 or 3 times since the fish kill. Great folks, friendly and helpful. They can always use the business, especially now.
sixfootfenwick
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I would suggest they don't, unless there is a total fish kill.
A
a23fish
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Why?The hardest hit section was one of the few fly fishing only sections in this area.
F
FirstLight
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the Beaver Creek fish kill occurred soon after a tremendous rainstorm. My guess is some toxins washed in from strong runoff associated with the rain. Maybe stored materials of some type had the toxins. Maybe runoff from route 70, this is just about at the start of the kill described in the local newspaper.
Read an article about adult salmon that were killed in a West Coast stream that had runoff from a heavily traveled intersection. Turned out the culprit was the UV protection that is commonly used on vehicle tires. Evidently if was flaking off at that West Coast stream-side intersection. Took some great investigators to figure that one out. And that only salmon were sensitive to it.
In the Maryland case, it is interesting that the reports were for dead brown trout. Wonder whether other common stream fish were impacted. Likely there are white suckers, sculpins and various minnows of that stream. Has anyone seen a report naming fish other than trout dying?
Hope the Maryland DNR will track down what the killed that Beaver Creek trout and reports its source. And what measures can be undertaken to avoid a reoccurence.
Nature abhors a vacumn; likely other trout and insects will move into that area and repopulate it sooner than later.
Read an article about adult salmon that were killed in a West Coast stream that had runoff from a heavily traveled intersection. Turned out the culprit was the UV protection that is commonly used on vehicle tires. Evidently if was flaking off at that West Coast stream-side intersection. Took some great investigators to figure that one out. And that only salmon were sensitive to it.
In the Maryland case, it is interesting that the reports were for dead brown trout. Wonder whether other common stream fish were impacted. Likely there are white suckers, sculpins and various minnows of that stream. Has anyone seen a report naming fish other than trout dying?
Hope the Maryland DNR will track down what the killed that Beaver Creek trout and reports its source. And what measures can be undertaken to avoid a reoccurence.
Nature abhors a vacumn; likely other trout and insects will move into that area and repopulate it sooner than later.
sixfootfenwick
Well-known member
Because of the genes you would be adding to the stream.
In my opinion, if it still has wild fish, let it repopulate like the Letort did after it's fish kill.
I wouldn't just add a bunch of hatchery fish.
There may be no need to ad to the stream. It might mean though, that fishing will be poor for quite awhile. From what this article states, 44 trout repopulated what it turned back into.
Ultimately Im sympathetic and understand if anglers and the state don't go this way. The situation really sucks.
Last edited:
redietz
Well-known member
Yes. Most of the published reports specifically mentioned suckers and sculpins. It's why they're pretty certain it wasn't a thermal event.
F
FirstLight
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Thanks Redietz. Now I see an article that mentions suckers and sculpins too.
A
a23fish
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MD DNR is considering reducing the creel limits for brown trout to zero on Beaver Creek to aid brown trout recovery. A good idea. Rainbows are stocked in lower sections of the creek, the FFO area is C&R.
JimKennedy
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The genetics of the fish in Beaver Creek is an important consideration when talking about whether to supplement a recovery by stocking fish, but the origin of the Beaver Creek browns is pretty easy to trace and the original strain is still available.
The brown trout in Beaver Creek, Big Gunpowder Falls, Big Hunting Creek and dozens – possibly hundreds -- of other Maryland streams that can no longer support brook trout, are from Jones Falls, a stream that flows along one of the most hated sections of highway in Baltimore, the Jones Falls Expressway. Upstream from the expressway and the Baltimore Beltway, however, is a land that time forgot, a territory that has been the refuge of Baltimore’s moneyed classes dating to the late 1800s.
First a mindless digression:
Like Beaver Creek, Jones Falls starts as a tiny bit of a waterway flowing through a golf course (The Greenspring Valley Hunt Club, where I worked briefly in the kitchen in the late 1980s). At the western edge of the golf course is a house with a fairly large spring hole in the front yard. The spring hole (which is protected by a rock wall that keeps the lawn separate from the water) gives the main branch of Jones Falls much of its water, and it’s cold year round. Other springs are scattered about through Greenspring Valley, some right in the creek, others along tributaries, resulting in a creek that is cold throughout the summer.
From there, the creek flows through pastures, old-money estates, and the campuses of a college (Stephenson University, formerly Villa Julie) and a few operations of the kind we used to call boarding schools. Decades ago, and I’m talking 1940s through early ‘60s, if not earlier, Jones Falls was a stocked trout stream, but issues with sewage infiltration resulted in that coming to an end, certainly well before the 1970s. The cold water, however, allowed for trout to flourish, and a few intrepid anglers have been devotees of the creek since I was a kid. It is one of the places where I learned to fish.
The North Branch of Jones Falls flows out of Caves Valley, and on one of its stronger springs, owned by an avid trout angler and fly fisherman named Simeon Joseph Yaruta, was used as a trout-rearing facility by the now defunct Maryland Fly Anglers.
Anyway, digression ends here, sort of:
In the 1980s, the Coldwater Fisheries Division of Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources was run by Robert A. Bachman (the guy who made a name for himself studying trout on central Pennsylvania’s Spruce Creek in the early 1980s), and his chief lieutenants were biologists Howard Stinefelt, Charlie Gougeon. All three were/are avid trout anglers and fly guys. This cast of characters were all friendly with my dad (who ran the Maryland Fly Angler’s operation for a few years), and were all very kind to me when I was a kid. They are the source of information for this tangled, rambling mess.
They made possible the cooperative Maryland Fly Anglers trout project on the Yaruta property, and also recognized the potential of many Maryland streams, long devoid of native brook trout, to support wild brown trout. They set up an operation along the headwaters of Jones Falls and each autumn, harvested the eggs and milt of the stream’s very healthy brood stock. They found that the wild browns, once their egg sacs were depleted, were all but impossible to raise because they are inherently skittish, to the point of mortally injuring themselves anytime someone came around and tried to feed them. Howard and Charlie worked around the problems, and devised ways to get very young trout planted in streams across Maryland that did not already support wild fish. The result is the state is home to a shockingly good wild trout fishery, built on the Jones Falls strain. I say shockingly good, because trout in Maryland are a distant fourth place on the fisheries priority list, after Chesapeake Bay fish, Atlantic Ocean fish, and warmwater lake fish.
Skip to the point
Now that I’ve taken longer than William Faulkner to get to my point, here it is: If Maryland were to stock Jones Falls trout in Beaver Creek, the genetic line would not be affected because that’s where the Beaver Creek brood stock came from.
Two brief footnotes:
1-There’s a second Baltimore strain of wild browns whose story mirrors that of the Jones Falls strain, but populates the western drainage of the Gunpowder watershed in the Butler Valley (Western Run and its tributaries).
2-I’m not spot burning by identifying Jones Falls and the Western Run watershed as being homes to healthy wild trout populations (including some brookies in the Western Run tributaries). I challenge even the most skilled of bait anglers to fish either creek with nightcrawlers and minnows and come away anything but humbled at how difficult the trout are to catch. You may be able to land a few, but you will destroy your boots and leave with a thousand thorn scratches. And a substantial part of the Western Run watershed is on horse farms and fox chase runs where fishing is allowed only with landowner permission. No one is going to shoot you, but you will be escorted off the property, forthwith, by burly farm hands if you don’t have permission.
The brown trout in Beaver Creek, Big Gunpowder Falls, Big Hunting Creek and dozens – possibly hundreds -- of other Maryland streams that can no longer support brook trout, are from Jones Falls, a stream that flows along one of the most hated sections of highway in Baltimore, the Jones Falls Expressway. Upstream from the expressway and the Baltimore Beltway, however, is a land that time forgot, a territory that has been the refuge of Baltimore’s moneyed classes dating to the late 1800s.
First a mindless digression:
Like Beaver Creek, Jones Falls starts as a tiny bit of a waterway flowing through a golf course (The Greenspring Valley Hunt Club, where I worked briefly in the kitchen in the late 1980s). At the western edge of the golf course is a house with a fairly large spring hole in the front yard. The spring hole (which is protected by a rock wall that keeps the lawn separate from the water) gives the main branch of Jones Falls much of its water, and it’s cold year round. Other springs are scattered about through Greenspring Valley, some right in the creek, others along tributaries, resulting in a creek that is cold throughout the summer.
From there, the creek flows through pastures, old-money estates, and the campuses of a college (Stephenson University, formerly Villa Julie) and a few operations of the kind we used to call boarding schools. Decades ago, and I’m talking 1940s through early ‘60s, if not earlier, Jones Falls was a stocked trout stream, but issues with sewage infiltration resulted in that coming to an end, certainly well before the 1970s. The cold water, however, allowed for trout to flourish, and a few intrepid anglers have been devotees of the creek since I was a kid. It is one of the places where I learned to fish.
The North Branch of Jones Falls flows out of Caves Valley, and on one of its stronger springs, owned by an avid trout angler and fly fisherman named Simeon Joseph Yaruta, was used as a trout-rearing facility by the now defunct Maryland Fly Anglers.
Anyway, digression ends here, sort of:
In the 1980s, the Coldwater Fisheries Division of Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources was run by Robert A. Bachman (the guy who made a name for himself studying trout on central Pennsylvania’s Spruce Creek in the early 1980s), and his chief lieutenants were biologists Howard Stinefelt, Charlie Gougeon. All three were/are avid trout anglers and fly guys. This cast of characters were all friendly with my dad (who ran the Maryland Fly Angler’s operation for a few years), and were all very kind to me when I was a kid. They are the source of information for this tangled, rambling mess.
They made possible the cooperative Maryland Fly Anglers trout project on the Yaruta property, and also recognized the potential of many Maryland streams, long devoid of native brook trout, to support wild brown trout. They set up an operation along the headwaters of Jones Falls and each autumn, harvested the eggs and milt of the stream’s very healthy brood stock. They found that the wild browns, once their egg sacs were depleted, were all but impossible to raise because they are inherently skittish, to the point of mortally injuring themselves anytime someone came around and tried to feed them. Howard and Charlie worked around the problems, and devised ways to get very young trout planted in streams across Maryland that did not already support wild fish. The result is the state is home to a shockingly good wild trout fishery, built on the Jones Falls strain. I say shockingly good, because trout in Maryland are a distant fourth place on the fisheries priority list, after Chesapeake Bay fish, Atlantic Ocean fish, and warmwater lake fish.
Skip to the point
Now that I’ve taken longer than William Faulkner to get to my point, here it is: If Maryland were to stock Jones Falls trout in Beaver Creek, the genetic line would not be affected because that’s where the Beaver Creek brood stock came from.
Two brief footnotes:
1-There’s a second Baltimore strain of wild browns whose story mirrors that of the Jones Falls strain, but populates the western drainage of the Gunpowder watershed in the Butler Valley (Western Run and its tributaries).
2-I’m not spot burning by identifying Jones Falls and the Western Run watershed as being homes to healthy wild trout populations (including some brookies in the Western Run tributaries). I challenge even the most skilled of bait anglers to fish either creek with nightcrawlers and minnows and come away anything but humbled at how difficult the trout are to catch. You may be able to land a few, but you will destroy your boots and leave with a thousand thorn scratches. And a substantial part of the Western Run watershed is on horse farms and fox chase runs where fishing is allowed only with landowner permission. No one is going to shoot you, but you will be escorted off the property, forthwith, by burly farm hands if you don’t have permission.
sixfootfenwick
Well-known member
Thank you for this, very neat history in there.
Yes I agree with you. If they were to do that it would be best and that kind of stocking would be perfectly fine.
Straight up hatchery fish though, I would avoid
A
a23fish
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Now that is an interesting bit of MD trout history right there. Thanks!
JimKennedy
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Jones Falls is tough with a fly rod, but can be done late autumn through early spring. They aren’t much for surface feeding, so you aren’t missing any hatch action.
Last time I fished it was late winter with panther Martin spinners. I accidentally tossed a spinner over a tree hanging over a deep pool.
Of course a Maryland monster hen brown swatted the thing and I hooked her. Ended up landing the fish swinging the carabiner on my wading stick with one hand and holding the rod in the other. Not as easy as it sounds, but I did not fall in, and I got the fish. She is probably still there. They don’t move much in that creek except at spawn time.
Western Run fishing makes that sound easy. They can be taken on nymphs in western, but mainly you catch nothing and see a very few of the ones you scare.
