DCNR at Valley Forge

[afishinado]

JasonS wrote:
Best thing that could happen to this stream is them lifting the C&R regs and instituting some type of slot limit , allowing harvest of 8" to 12" fish.

Most the the "decent" fish I catch on Valley are around 8-12". It's rare to catch one larger than that, since the stream doesn't have the best habitat and food supply in the world, IMO. Cropping out most of the decent fish would not enhance and would actually diminish the angling experince on the stream, IMHO.

 

[JasonS]

I disagree. There's a ton of big fish habitat, from undercut banks to root wads. There's enough food to support a pretty massive biomass. The problem is, that biomass is made up of an over abundance of small fish. Start removing those fish and you'll start to see larger fish on average, imho.

 

[afishinado]

Habitat improvement would have an awful lot more impact on the size structure of trout in Valley than any harvest regulation. With every high water event the silt shifts like the sands in Sahara desert filling in the deep areas and carving out others. The rush of water erodes the exposed banks and pours silt into the stream. And high water events are the norm on since rainwater draining from impervious surfaces. Check out the graph on the USGS site. The water rises and falls at a steep rate even during a relatively minor rain event.

In addition, to support larger fish, a large forage base is needed and none really exist in the stream. Further, Valley lacks both numbers and certainly diverisity of macros.

Stop in on a meeting of Valley Forge Trout Unlimited. The people there can share a lot of info about the stream.

 

[englishprof]

Fish it when the flow is between 80 and 120 CFS which it rarely is for long. You will find out about big fish in Valley.

 

[jbomb]

I'm always happy to see DNCR guys when I'm fishing, and say "thank you" when my license is checked. I'm a fan of the "no harvest" regulation on Valley, but that stems from the belief that there would not be a healthy population if the regulation wasn't in place. I think catching mostly smaller fish is a pretty good problem to have.