Brook Trout population before things were destroyed.

[misanthropist]

I can think of a lot of larger streams that have been degraded by coal mining and logging that have excellent ST populations in their smaller tribs. It seems reasonable to think that these main stems had at one time held Brook Trout of larger size.

A couple of watersheds that come to mind are the Mill Creek Drainage in Clarion County and South Sandy Creek in Venango County. Aside from water quality problems these streams get too warm to support Brookies now, but a few hundred years ago old growth forest would have most certainly kept the water cold enough. I can't help but to wonder what it would have been like. obviously no one can say for sure and historical records are spotty.

I am curious to hear some opinions on this subject. And does anyone know of any sources of information other than "The Vanishing Trout"?

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

I highly suggest you read Brook Trout by Nick Karas. Awesome read and Yes!
Except Brook trout here used larger watersheds seasonally before coal, urbanization and deforestation. They migrated around folks. Tremendous fishy lost. A few limestone watersheds produce the best brookies now. Still I've seen large wild brook trout in pine move on the summer. They will not eat they are on survival mode. Still PA is not what it WAS in the early colonial times.

Worse yet is the shad honestly. Could you imagine warmwater fly fishing the historic shad runs?

 

[Chaz]

In SE PA there are still places where brookies get larger than 6 to 8 inches. In fact there is more water that holds brookies over 10 inches in SE PA then any other place I fish.
Before the stocking of browns just about everywhere, all the limestone streams had brook trout populations. And the brookies grew big in the limestone streams.

 

[misanthropist]

I have read 'Brook Trout' by Nick Karas, great book. I too spend a lot of time thinking about the shad run. It would have been a sight to see! Not to change the subject, but does anyone know exactly how far the Shad traveled?

 

[misanthropist]

Chaz, you mention Southeast PA. Although not exactly southeast, would the Letort have held Brook Trout?

 

[LetortAngler]

The Letort did hold Brook trout up until a few years after WW2. Just about all the limestone streams in PA held Brookies at one time.

 

[just_jon]

The Letort once held brook trout in the left branch according to the book "The Letort - A Limestone Legacy" published by the Central PA Conservancy. I have fished the stream since 1970 and never caught a brook trout, but that is hardly scientific evidence. Also, I have never fished more than a hundred yards or so up the the left branch as it was not open to fishing.

 

[geebee]

all the streams in the traditional range held brook trout and many northern streams and limestoner would have had Artic Grayling populations too.

Grayling, MI was named due to the abundance of the fish, now in the entire state of MI there is one sole spring pond that holds Grayling.

similarly the Delaware and all coastal streams north would have held Atlantic Salmon, salter brook trout and shad runs, striped bass and surprisingly shortnose sturgeon.

sadly, i think we are at about 10% of piscine inshore biomass compared to original.

 

[outsider]

I had a book that described Kettle Creek in the 1800's and the early 1900's. Fisherman would take a train to Renovo, then a horse-drawn wagon to the Hammersley Fork and Cross Fork areas of Kettle Creek. Legendary fisherman in the area included Rube Cross.

There were large brook trout in Kettle Creek, and when the water warmed up in the summer they would take refuge in tribs like Hammersley Fork, Cross Fork Creek and Trout Run. When they were in the tribs, it was described as this: stacked up like cord wood so thick you could walk across them. Logging, mine acid drainage, and the lack of kill limits (it went from no limit to 50 trout per day, then 25 trout per day) all took it's toll.

 

[pcray1231]

I have some ancient magazine and newspaper articles. You are thinking WAY too small. Mill Creek? Well, I'd assume so, since the Clarion itself did. Likewise Tionesta, Oil, Redbank, Brokenstraw, etc. Some from that time frame were lamenting browns increasingly taking over the big waters, while others were trying to figure out how to catch them.

 

[moon1284]

Geebee-

I get your point, but the DE River never had a salmon run or salter run and I don't think there were ever grayling in PA (or NY). The DE River definitely held brook trout, but the trout fishery in the DE River now extends further south than it did historically because of the dams.

I think atlantic salmon were always N of the Hudson. Also as a side note, in the Great Lakes, Atlantic salmon were only native to Lake Ontario, Niagara Falls was the natural barrier and they weren't found in the upper great lakes. St Marys river supposedly has the best atlantic salmon fishery in the great lakes, but the fish are stocked and were never native.

 

[misanthropist]

pcray, yes Mill Creek. I used it as an example because the fish population in the main stem was destroyed from amd and logging, forcing the fish out of it and into the tiny tributaries. As far as it being small, yea compared to Kettle or Pine it is tiny, but it is still MUCH larger than your typical freestone Brookie Stream.

 

[steveo27]

I fish Mill Creek a good number of times since its an easy drive for me when I want to catch stocked fish.

This spring, I did catch one native brookie in it just down stream of Frozen Toe Rd. I fished it again this summer with no luck, not even a stockie.

Last weekend, I was back up there, I fished Pendleton run, which leads up to McCanna Run. Had very little luck, the fish I did catch were small. Pendleton run flows into Mill Creek just upstream of Old State Rd.

The Mill Creek drainage is a beautiful place, its a shame its so polluted. I could only imagine what it would have been like 200 years ago.

 

[misanthropist]

Steve-o, I know all of the tribs well. The first wild brookie i ever caught was out of Mccanna. There are a few Native Brookies in the main stem, but not very many and they are all concentrated in the upper reaches of the creek.

 

[just_jon]

The Letort once held brook trout in the left branch according to the book "The Letort - A Limestone Legacy" published by the Central PA Conservancy. I have fished the stream since 1970 and never caught a brook trout, but that is hardly scientific evidence.

 

[Chaz]

misanthropist wrote:
Chaz, you mention Southeast PA. Although not exactly southeast, would the Letort have held Brook Trout?

Absolutely! All of the limestone streams had populations of brookies until deforestation which in some areas of the Commonwealth happened as many as 300 years ago.

 

[Chaz]

geebee wrote:
all the streams in the traditional range held brook trout and many northern streams and limestoner would have had Artic Grayling populations too.

Grayling, MI was named due to the abundance of the fish, now in the entire state of MI there is one sole spring pond that holds Grayling.

similarly the Delaware and all coastal streams north would have held Atlantic Salmon, salter brook trout and shad runs, striped bass and surprisingly shortnose sturgeon.

sadly, i think we are at about 10% of piscine inshore biomass compared to original.

Atlantic Salmon were never in the Delaware Basin, it is believed though that the range of Atlantic Salmon was as far south as the Hudson River.
It could be argued that Atlantic Salmon could have been established in the Delaware R. before the end of the Ice Age, but gradually disappeared as the ice sheets melted. Grayling were never in PA., however there were some lakes in PA that had Lake Trout.

 

[Cornholio]

Pretty much all of PA would have had Brook Trout Populations even in the bigger streams. I doubt there were ever Brook Trout in southwest PA (Greene, Washington, Beaver counties) due to the geology of that region.

Brook Trout populations shifted with the advances and retreats of glaciers. The Allegheny River used to flow completely differently than it does now.

To my knowledge there were never Grayling, Arctic Char or Atlantic Salmon in PA.

As far as Mill Creek goes. It used to have excellent Brook Trout Fishing. I have pictures of my great great grandfather holding a stringer of brookies in the 10 to 12 inch range. His son, my great grandfather worked as a logger and took part in the logging in that drainage. The fishing was never the same after the trees were cut down and then a decade or two later the coal companies put the final nail in the coffin.

South Sandy Creek would have probably been about the same, maybe even a little better.

The amount of logging that took place in this state is incomprehensible. losing those mature forest played a crucial role in the loss of Brook Trout populations. Entire gene pools would have been lost and I would imagine genetics had a lot to do with bigger brook trout. I doubt it was completely environmental.

 

[troutbert]

Vanishing Trout does a good job of describing the situation on the Loyalsock, i.e. that brook trout were found far downstream on that large freestone stream.

He talks mostly about that stream, but many other freestone streams drainages in PA are very similar, and I think it's reasonable to assume that the situation with the brook trout was probably similar.

And there are historical references to the brook trout fishing on many streams. There are writings about Kettle Creek, and the brookies migrating from the mainstream up into the tribs in the summer. Including tribs like Trout Run and Hammersley. On a map you can see that these are pretty far down on Kettle, where Kettle is a pretty large stream.

And Nessmunk wrote about the June rise, when brookies would move from Pine Creek up into the tribs.

In the book Sinnemahone there are only brief mentions of trout fishing, but he does say that a brook trout that was 18 inches long and broad as a bass was caught in the Bennett Branch near the mouth of Hicks Run. The Bennett Branch is a large stream at that point.

The book Bodines, Camping in the Alleghenies talks about brook trout fishing on Lycoming Creek near Bodines (which is still a place name on the maps). Lycoming Creek is a fairly large stream at that point.

Also, I've caught wild brook trout in PA in modern times in streams that are 50-70 feet wide.

 

[geebee]

Chaz wrote:

Atlantic Salmon were never in the Delaware Basin, it is believed though that the range of Atlantic Salmon was as far south as the Hudson River.

yes my bad, when i looked it up, the salmon runs of the 1800's were stocked not natal (1871 & 1892).