krayfish2 wrote:
Have they ever indicated when they will be able to tell the public what happened to cause it?
I heard on the radio today (and the source appears to be https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/test-results-from-donegal-creek-site-of-fish-kill-could/article_4ee4de60-6b82-11e9-8e1a-8ba47a49dbe8.html) that water samples are being tested, and results could take up to 30 days.
I assume that once they know what caused it and what the source was, they'll notify the public. It takes time for test results, time to quantify the magnitude of the kill (in one case, where I know a farmer that had a manure spill, the fine was calculated on the inventory of dead fish and aquatic life that they counted) and time to properly investigate what happened.
Regarding stocking, two entities stock the stream - Donegal Fish and Conservation Association (DFCA) is a co-op nursery, and PFBC. I don't think the PFBC allocation is a large one, possibly towards the size of their minimum of 300 fish, and it is only in the FFO stretch and pre-season. I don't know how many fish the DFCA stocks, but some of that was in the open water (which years ago was PFBC stocked). I think someone had posted, or I talked to an angler streamside this year, that no or minimal DFCA stocking occurred this year, possibly due to last year's flooding damaging the nursery.
A few years ago, Donegal was one of the experimental streams that the PFBC used for stocking rainbow fingerlings. They heldover poorly (although that first fish that wgmiller posted sure looks like a wild fish), but during the shocking to record rainbow retention is when a Class A wild brown population was discovered. For a bit, anyway... Because the resurvey didn't turn up the same biomass. But wild browns were definitely present - wgmiller's pics show what I think is only one stocker brown, against the rest being wild fish.
There's certainly one, or many, PhD projects that could come out of this stream.
