good article on brookie restoration (w/ image of WVA brookie, big as a largemouth)

[k-bob]

http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/brook-trout-restoration-83031062

is that fisherman with the brookie ... a much younger chaz?

 

[troutbert]

Look at the size of that brookie from back in 1900! That's a monster.

 

[Fishidiot]

Thanks K-bob - good stuff.
Yeah, that photo is striking - fish appears to be well over twenty inches and maybe five pounds?

 

[The_Sasquatch]

Will/could we ever see brookies like that again? Did we ever have brookies like that in PA?

 

[delta_dog]

See that's what you catch on size 6 streamers.

 

[lv2nymph]

Please don't rehash that one again, that is one beast of a brookie. :-o

 

[delta_dog]

Lol....sorry guy.

 

[JackM]

k-bob wrote:
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/brook-trout-restoration-83031062

is that fisherman with the brookie ... a much younger chaz?

Photoshop!

 

[k-bob]

I will never know, but I am not sure that really big brookies would be fun to fish for .... On the other hand, what would that brookie do to a dry fly?

 

[lv2nymph]

That's something I'd love to find out!

 

[wildtrout2]

The_Sasquatch wrote:
Will/could we ever see brookies like that again? Did we ever have brookies like that in PA?

I doubt we'll see them again, but we certainly did have natives like that many years ago. Pick up a copy of The Vanishing Trout and you'll read stories of many large natives being caught in Pa before the logging and the coal extraction.
I'm sure brookies as big as the one in that pic were still pretty rare though, that's a monster!

 

[KenU]

I have done a fair amount of research on the brook trout of Pennsylvania. We did grow them up to about 20 inches in the past, both in the limestone streams and our large freestone streams.
Brookies in the limestone streams got big - just as brown trout do today - because the water stayed cold year round and there was plenty of food. When brown trout were introduced into these streams they took to them very well...too well, because they almost completely displaced the brookies. Not entirely though; we still have some pretty fair-sized brookies in Fishing Creek where both species thrive.

The story of the big freestones is a little more complicated: According to old angling literature, brookies living in these streams only spent about half their time in the big water. As the big streams warmed in the summer they would move upstream into tributaries and headwaters where the water stayed cold. And you can bet they survived by eating little brookies as they went. After spawning in the fall they moved back downstream to the bigger waters to winter over. They fed heavily on minnows and crayfish and the massive spring hatches. This gave them an advantage over the upstream fish and allowed them to reach sizes we can only imagine today. Foot-long brookies were not unusual.

The massive logging of the forests obviously caused this life-cycle to become much less viable. I do wonder, however, what would happen if we stopped stocking and plundering some of these lower stream reaches for a while. I have caught native brookies all the way down to the swimming hole at Ole Bull Park as late as mid-June, and they seemed to be doing just fine And stocked trout do just fine during the period (October - June) when the old-time brookies once utilized these waters.

 

[Maurice]

Ken,

Stockng was much more widespread back then and the limit was 50 then 25 up to the 70's. before it went down to 12 then 8 I believe and now 5. And this in direct correlation with reduced stocking numbers.

Help me understand why when stocking was greater and limits 10 fold over today that big fish were able to escape the opening day gauntlet.

I don't disagree that stocking encourages cropping of wild pop. I see it in our watershed with wild browns being rarely caught over 12" because every year the onslaught of anglers harvest fish of any size over the 7" limit. Even if they survive a year or two over the size limit they are cheating death with each year of growth where harvest is likely due to stocking.

 

[troutbert]

I think the really large brookies were caught in streams in remote places, before the streams were stocked.

It's very likely the really large brookies were gone even long before the streams were stocked. Probably as soon as there was much access or a few settlers in the area, the really large brookies disappeared.

In PA, there was a really large logging boom in the 1880s, when logging locomotives became available and logging railroads were extended all out through the big woods.

My guess is that there were still some large brookies being caught in NC PA into the 1880s, while there was still some remote places left, but that was the era when the big woods was getting removed at a rapid rate, so that's probably around the time when the era of the really big brookies was also coming to an end.

 

[Fishidiot]

troutbert wrote:
I think the really large brookies were caught in streams in remote places, before the streams were stocked.

It's very likely the really large brookies were gone even long before the streams were stocked. Probably as soon as there was much access or a few settlers in the area, the really large brookies disappeared.

In PA, there was a really large logging boom in the 1880s, when logging locomotives became available and logging railroads were extended all out through the big woods.

My guess is that there were still some large brookies being caught in NC PA into the 1880s, while there was still some remote places left, but that was the era when the big woods was getting removed at a rapid rate, so that's probably around the time when the era of the really big brookies was also coming to an end.

Agreed.
It's worth remembering that, by about 1900 as Troutbert points out, much of the forest was gone and there had been a generation of anglers pounding the streams and stocking was prevalent, all made possible by railroads. Although I'd like to believe this is a wild fish and that they were still prevalent in this size a century ago.... there's a good chance it's just a big stockie much like those one can see nowadays in any small town PA newspaper early in the trout season.

 

[KenU]

Maurice, I was speaking of the trout fishing late in the 1800s and early 1900s, long before stocking of catachable size trout became so popular. Troutbert describes the situation very nicely in a later post.

 

[k-bob]

hard to image the state prelogging, there really were mountain lions back then:

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091014/sports/910140326

not sure i would have fished for the brookies with those things around

 

[k-bob]

Interesting 1905 article on the decline of native brook trout in NY, PA here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=0MHTvgleJ9IC&pg=RA1-PA90&lpg=RA1-PA90&dq=%22john+d.+whish%22+trout&source=bl&ots=hLKmccaVqg&sig=c5XvTx8p-hJUCd5P97Pp7cPsb8E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2UknUeyIA8u30QGAn4CIBg&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22john%20d.%20whish%22%20trout&f=false

Nice article about the native brookie, that "gold sprinkled, living arrow of the whitewater."

Discusses deforestation, pollution from paper mill and tanneries, increasing water temps, and parasites as threats to native brookies. Says that remote mountain fishing for brookies may have been better in Pike and Wayne counties in 1905 than 1875. Interesting that not much is said about coal mining?

 

[franklin]

k-bob wrote:
hard to image the state prelogging, there really were mountain lions back then:

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091014/sports/910140326

not sure i would have fished for the brookies with those things around

Both my grandfathers were born in the 1800s and were avid outdoorsmen in central Pa. One of my grandfathers used to tell me of large piles of hemlock logs three to four feet or more in diameter pile high at tanneries in the Lockhaven area. He said many of the mountain streams, White Deer Creek in particular, ran red with bark from the hemlocks scraped off during the lumbering.

I have some old pictures of that era with some of the large mountains (Paddy Mountain was one) stripped bare. You can see single pines way up on top that were by passed for some reason or another.

For many years after the logging the streams were devoid of trout. It took about twenty years for some streams to re-populate from the few tributaries that ran through areas too rough to log.

I was fortunate that both grandfathers lived to a very old age and I got to benefit from their stories about that period.

I have mentioned in previous threads that I have woodland in the area that was originally my grandfather's. It had been logged about 1895. There is a perfect stream running thorough it that would be perfect for brookies. A mill dam was built downstream before the logging thus preventing the stream from repopulating with brookies after the logging. (I know that there were brookies in there prior to the logging because my grandfather's family was from the area and knew the history of the stream.)

 

[k-bob]

Franklin your comment that it takes a long time for brookies to reappear after logging fits with something in the article I linked this AM in post #18 above...

This article states that the brookie fishing may have better in 1905 than it had been 30 years earlier in some parts of Pennsylvania, Pike and Wayne counties.


At the end of this 1905 article, someone from Rhode Island recounts how brush was growing along streams and fish were recovering after logging had been finished...

"our sawmills are all gone... the country is growing back up to brush... the streams are covered in brush so that it is all but impossible to get a line in them in places, but they are full of trout..." "the fishermen are getting trout, and big ones..." "we cut off the woods 30 or 40 years ago, but they have grown up again..."