Better quality fishing?

[TimMurphy]

I’m wondering if one of my smallmouth streams is experiencing this, as I have experienced noticeably larger fish the last 2 years. That said I fished it last October after it started getting water back into it and couldn’t find a fish. Between last years low water and predators it may be a bust this coming year.

Sorry, back to trout streams talk…..

Dear td566,

Is your creek a tributary of a larger river that has smallmouth? Many of the local streams around the Susquehanna have actual spawning runs of smallmouth in the Spring. If water conditions remain favorable more than a few of them stick around all year too.

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[dryflyguy]

I started fishing the Little J in the mid '80's
And it was pretty good, although I mostly caught fish in the 10 inch range.
Being new to the sport, I was fine with that.
Just happy to find rising fish.

NO catch and release on it then.
You could creel 8 fish at that time.
And I saw people doing it.

Then the limit was cut back to 5 fish per day
And eventually catch and release.

The fishing slowly started to improve - size wise
To the point now, that I really think its the best that it's been in my 40 years fishing it
So yes, regulations can really help a stream IMO

 

[nymphingmaniac]

Rainbow trout 100% spawn in Spring Creek.. There is no doubt about it!

yeah, but those bastardized fall spawners

 

[greywolf]

The wild trout population in Spring Creek appears to have increased. Mike said in another thread that when he fished it in the 1970s they never caught wild trout. Now it has a high wild brown trout population. That is a very big change.

What was suppressing the wild trout population in the past?

Th wild brown trout population has definitely improved over the years but the size of the fish has decreased in the past 15 from my experience. I remember and documented catching 17 - 20 inch trout on a fairly regular basis there in the 2007 -2017 time frame, but in the past 7-8 years it has become a rare event for me.

 

[5footfenwick]

Th wild brown trout population has definitely improved over the years but the size of the fish has decreased in the past 15 from my experience. I remember and documented catching 17 - 20 inch trout on a fairly regular basis there in the 2007 -2017 time frame, but in the past 7-8 years it has become a rare event for me.

I seemed to have my best years size wise from 2009-2012. A few 20 inchers were caught. 22 or 23 Being the biggest. They seem to have either disappeared or become uncatchable. Kinda weird to think it could be overpopulated and stunting the population. But I’m not sure what else to blame it on?
~5footfenwick

 

[rustbeltwilds]

One particular stream i fish has gone thru some changes just 3 or 4 years ago lots of 10 to 12 in browns. And lots of 8in and 9in.. now lots of 16in to 17... very few 18in and 19 in.... and lots fewer 8 to 12 inchers..but more 20inchers than ever....also i have noticed LOTS more blue herons...and white poop on the rocks...i really beleive they are having a negative impact on the overall population of trout on this stream

 

[wildtrout2]

One particular stream i fish has gone thru some changes just 3 or 4 years ago lots of 10 to 12 in browns. And lots of 8in and 9in.. now lots of 16in to 17... very few 18in and 19 in.... and lots fewer 8 to 12 inchers..but more 20inchers than ever....also i have noticed LOTS more blue herons...and white poop on the rocks...i really beleive they are having a negative impact on the overall population of trout on this stream

Other than the Herons, it sounds like a great stream, especially with it having more 20"ers than ever!

 

[rustbeltwilds]

Maybe i got better catching the 20 inchers after years and years and countless hours of attempting to target them lol lol. Perhaps they were always there. Lol

 

[5footfenwick]

Maybe i got better catching the 20 inchers after years and years and countless hours of attempting to target them lol lol. Perhaps they were always there. Lol

We definitely get better overtime and it skews our perspective of some streams. We perceive them as changing or improving. But perhaps it’s us that have changed and improved all along.

 

[nd1001]

I remember seeing some PFBC electroshock survey data with sample results from the same stream (wilderness brookie stream) sampled across several different years. In some years there was a high count of 9”+ fish and in other years practically none. Obviously limited data, but there is definitely something to be said for size distributions fluctuating over time with year classes.

I also agree that time spent learning a particular stream is likely to translate to catching more big fish. On my first visit to a particular stream, I approached an obvious “fishy” plunge pool from the inside bank and caught a small trout in the main current seam. On my second visit, I made a similar approach and spooked a larger fish from a logjam at the base of the pool. The next year, I approached from a different route where I could drift a fly to the logjam instead of the main plunge, and I caught a large trout. Every subsequent trip, the same approach has been good for a solid fish or two.

 

[ANF-Hiker]

Most streams I've fished multiple times ebb and flow on the quality and quantity of fish caught. From my (more observational than using any data) view, it seems that if we get a full year of relatively wet weather, the trout size seems to increase. If we have a very dry calendar year, the trout tend to be smaller. For me, 2011 was a great year for fishing, 2012 was not so good, 2013 was decent again, 2018 was good, 2019 not so good, 2022 good.

 

[Letort]

I would say the wild browns have been thriving, Wild brook trout are pretty dependent on the watershed and the drought and low water conditions the past several years has been hard on the spawning.

 

[sixfootfenwick]

One particular stream i fish has gone thru some changes just 3 or 4 years ago lots of 10 to 12 in browns. And lots of 8in and 9in.. now lots of 16in to 17... very few 18in and 19 in.... and lots fewer 8 to 12 inchers..but more 20inchers than ever....also i have noticed LOTS more blue herons...and white poop on the rocks...i really beleive they are having a negative impact on the overall population of trout on this stream

Maybe i got better catching the 20 inchers after years and years and countless hours of attempting to target them lol lol. Perhaps they were always there. Lol

Bills Creek fish don't count, it's like dragging a euro rig through a Sockeye run.

 

[wgmiller]

To clarify one thing, my comment pertained to the greater Houserville and immediate Lemont areas.

I may be mistaken, but doesn't this area see FAR less pressure than more popular stretches of Spring such as Fisherman's Paradise, etc.? Also, isn't a good bit of water in the Lemont area posted/private?

 

[vern]

Dear Troutbert,

I'll hazard a guess on this, stocking 10000 trout a year in Spring Creek until the Kepone was discovered in 1983 played a huge role in suppressing the wild trout population. For all of that time it was subject to harvest with an 8 fish limit too. While wild trout may have been few in number certainly some of them were coincidentally harvested.

The next forty plus years of no stocking demonstrates the resiliency of those hatchery trout to establish and maintain the wild population.

Edited to add- I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there have been several substantial floods over the years that have released both rainbow and brook trout into Spring Creek from the Benner Spring Hatchery. I think I've read on here that there are now sections on Spring Creek that seem to produce stream born rainbows based on the size and appearance of the fish being caught. It's not scientific evidence, but a 4-inch rainbow with parr marks being caught after the preceding year featured low water conditions seems to hint at the fish being born in the stream.

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

Kepone and mirex were there in the very early 1980s.
My late friend, Mark Antolosky, filled me in on details when we met up in college in the George Harvey created Penn State phys ed credit class that Humphreys was teaching at the time. Mark was his teaching assistant. I took the course because it was going to be the easiest credit I could ask for. I had been introduced to Joe through some others within the system and he and three other friends went fishing with Joe a year or so before.
He knew I had skills, and as soon as the class tied a fly, Joe came over and told me to get up and teach.
Blah, blah, ...
So Mark and I became best friends for a long time. Mark's dad was Paul Antolosky, who was the well known Fish Commission warden for Spring Creek, and who was a main creator of the stream construction in the Fisherman's Paradise. He was a devoted, dedicated protector of Spring Creek.

So Mark had filled me in on the matter and showed me the sources and also some other pollution problems in Bellefonte.

But there were wild trout in the stream back then.

When the poisoning notice of the trout was known, the properties along the stream from the Paradise down through to Bellefonte were selling for next to nothing!!!

Mark told me later that the poison problem was gone for some time before the public was notified.

 

[Mike]

I may be mistaken, but doesn't this area see FAR less pressure than more popular stretches of Spring such as Fisherman's Paradise, etc.? Also, isn't a good bit of water in the Lemont area posted/private?

Check the time period that I referenced.

 

[TimMurphy]

Kepone and mirex were there in the very early 1980s.
My late friend, Mark Antolosky, filled me in on details when we met up in college in the George Harvey created Penn State phys ed credit class that Humphreys was teaching at the time. Mark was his teaching assistant. I took the course because it was going to be the easiest credit I could ask for. I had been introduced to Joe through some others within the system and he and three other friends went fishing with Joe a year or so before.
He knew I had skills, and as soon as the class tied a fly, Joe came over and told me to get up and teach.
Blah, blah, ...
So Mark and I became best friends for a long time. Mark's dad was Paul Antolosky, who was the well known Fish Commission warden for Spring Creek, and who was a main creator of the stream construction in the Fisherman's Paradise. He was a devoted, dedicated protector of Spring Creek.

So Mark had filled me in on the matter and showed me the sources and also some other pollution problems in Bellefonte.

But there were wild trout in the stream back then.

When the poisoning notice of the trout was known, the properties along the stream from the Paradise down through to Bellefonte were selling for next to nothing!!!

Mark told me later that the poison problem was gone for some time before the public was notified.

Dear vern,

I took Joe Humphrey's Angling class, the George Harvey one, the Spring trimester after I took Joe's casting class in Rec Hall during the Winter trimester. Joe Humphrey's taught me a life skill that I still treasure to this day! I learned to cast conventional Penn 920 bait casters loaded with braided Dacron to targets on the Rec Hall basketball floor. I still have a couple of Penn 920's and use them today. We cast Fenwick 756 Fenglas rods and Pflueger 1494's for the second half of the course in Rec Hall too. I still have more than a few Pflueger's too!

Those classes were 2 quick and easy A's! 😉

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[TimMurphy]

I may be mistaken, but doesn't this area see FAR less pressure than more popular stretches of Spring such as Fisherman's Paradise, etc.? Also, isn't a good bit of water in the Lemont area posted/private?

Dear wgmiller,

Back when I was at PSU, 1978-82, Spring Creek was stocked to the gills and you could fish from the quarry above Lemont all the way down under Rte 26 and into Houserville through people's backyards and no one batted an eye or bothered you in the least.

It was a much different world back then!

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[vern]

Dear wgmiller,

Back when I was at PSU, 1978-82, Spring Creek was stocked to the gills and you could fish from the quarry above Lemont all the way down under Rte 26 and into Houserville through people's backyards and no one batted an eye or bothered you in the least.

It was a much different world back then!

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

Except behind Joe Humphreys' house!
One night, my friend Mark and I were hanging with Joe after class and we went to his house where he showed us his draft of his first book.
(I commented on part of it and he grabbed it back!!! Lol)
And then we got talking about night fishing. I had some experience with night fishing for largemouth and walleye and a little for late evening, but not specifically for trout.
We went to his stretch of the spring flow coming from beneath his house into Spring. He handed me his rod with a lead-headed deer hair sculpin tie, very similar to what was being done in the early days and what caught the almost state record trout out of Big Spring Creek, except that rig wasn't accepted by the Fish Commission as a legitimate fly, because of the spinning blade clip up front.
Anyway, he took the rod back from me after my second cast!
And it was/is his private water, so he was a bit protective of it.
Never made another cast in there. Lol.
But the entire stream flow above and below was pretty much all open water.

 

[vern]

Thoughts
Reproduction and food availability depend upon size and distribution of materials on the stream bottom and sides.
Heavy, mostly unprecedented frequent flooding has been occurring and significantly changing stream channels.
If the channel no longer possesses adequate spawning areas and material sizes, it can be expected that the total trout population will be down. However, the remaining adult fish have less competition for remaining food, and can grow larger, faster.

Erosion that provides the proper stone size to be deposited where subsurface flows support eggs needs to occur and be observed. It should be expected to happen, given steady precipitation without extremes that reconstruct the channel and its bottom.

Such changes also effect a change in types and numbers of insects and other fish species.