Hay Creek Brook Trout!!

[evanmart]

I have a fisheries science degree from penn state and have worked with salvelinus fontinalis and salmo trutta fry quite a bit. I am 100% confident this thing was a little Brookie. Though it is fun to see how close the two resemble eachother when they're babies. As for my buddy the bait fisherman... He's getting into fly fishing but on this night he was more comfortable with bait. Can't blame him due to some tight casting quarters on the upper end of this section. I am aware of the Tribs to this creek that hold brookies but just haven't seen reproducing brookies on the main stem of HAY. Perhaps a good sign for a stream that struggles with sedimentation issues, agriculture, and the heavy stocking.

 

[Mike]

It struggles with temperature combined with flow problems as well, and the area where the temperature starts to really heat up beyond the stress threshold for trout in the summer is very close to where you were fishing. Perhaps with the increased vegetative growth over the past 20 years that warming point may now be about a half mile or a bit more below where you were fishing.

With respect to brown trout, water temp is a general longitudinal problem in that stream, as the stream starts out cold, then heats up, hits a cool to cold zone again, then finishes with a warm zone. The middle warm zone also is low in gradient, so it has a substantial sediment deposition problem as well. The problem is both natural (sandy soil) and man-made (disturbances).

The brook trout that was captured is most likely one that had moved into Hay from the very near-by brook trout trib rather than one that was spawned in Hay directly. We see this is streams that become way too warm for brook trout survival as well. One that comes to mind is also in Berks.... As soon as that stream cools down again or has water in it after drying up for part of the summer, the brook trout are back in very low densities.