Dear Mike Kaufmann

[TimMurphy]

Dear Mike,

I know you post with some regularity on this message board and I know you are a regional fisheries manager for the Fish Commission in the SE Region.

There is a thread on the Flyfisher's Paradise forum that begs for a professional response and I'd like for you to take a look at it if you could. The thread involves the presence of trout around the Fabri-Dam during the late Spring. It can be found by following the link below and then navigating to the "Streamside" section of the forum. It is the "Faber Dam" thread.

http://www.flyfishersparadise.com/

If this post is inappropriate then feel free to delete it. I know that many people from this forum visit and post on the FFP forum so I thought I'd bring the subject over here.

As a personal note to Mike I apologize if I misspelled your last name. Around here the surname Kaufmann is a little like Shaffer, or is it Schaffer, or Schaeffer, or Schaefer? You get my drift? :-D

Regards,
Tim Murphy

 

[Padraic]

Here is a direct link to the thread:
http://www.flyfishersparadise.com/UBB/Forum7/HTML/000691.html

 

[Mike]

Tim,
I skimmed the thread about the trout below the Fabridam at Sunbury. Given that we see both wild trout and stocked trout pass through the Fairmount fishway on the Schuylkill in Philadelphia, it does not surprise me in the least that there are stocked and wild trout at the base of the fabridam when the Susquehanna is cool enough for them to survive. As you probably know, the Fairmount fishway is at the head-of-tide on the Schuylkill, so trout ascending the fishway are leaving tidal water and heading upstream. If they are present in that situation (and water quality), especially an occasional wild brown trout, those trout below the fabridam could be coming from almost anywhere. To my knowledge, the closest wild brown trout stream to Fairmount fishway is at least 12 miles upriver. Stocked streams discharge into the non-tidal Schuylkill and the tidal Delaware. The amount of trout movement that occurs in warm water river systems is surprising to most who have never thought about it (me as well at one time), but it no longer surprises me and all that is needed is the correct season of the year and any number of sources, because they clearly move upstream and downstream when the rivers are coolenough. The source of these fish below the fabridam could be from upstream or downstream tribs, they could be miles away, and they could even be warm water streams in their lower reaches.

Mike