Hostile Takeover in Coal Country

[Swattie87]

Scoured the maps and USGS streamflow site last evening for somewhere to go that I thought would have halfway decent conditions/flows. Landed on coal country, with a loose plan to do some exploring in an area I hadn't fished before. I did a little research on one stream in particular, and turned up an article citing a Class B Brook Trout population identified in a survey in the early 2000's, by our own Mike. I had a plan to fish the receiving stream of this stream for a ways, and then head up the Class B Brookie trib.

Upon arrival, the receiving stream was bright orange with signs of significant AMD impairment. It was terrific water habitat wise, but after dredging a small Slumpbuster through a few primo holes and turning up nothing, I quickly decided to punt on the larger stream and just headed for its confluence with the Class B Brookie stream. I've caught wild Trout before in orange streams, but after not seeing fish in this kind of habitat, there's clearly something wrong. The confluence (in hindsight I wish I took a picture of it) showed a clear demarcation in the waters. The left (Class B trib) was clear and free of any orange coloration. There was a line of white precipitate right where the waters met, and the right sided stream was even more orange upstream of there.

I fished up the trib about a half mile or so, and turned up a half dozen or so, all good sized, BROWNS. Not Brookies. Seems like the Browns have run out the Brookies in just a couple short decades. I didn't catch any Brookies, though there clearly could be some there. The Browns acted like Brookies though, readily eating my sloppy, draggy size 14 tan EHC that I switched to anticipating to find Brookies. The largest Brown pictured is high in the running for one of the biggest small stream Browns I've caught on a dry...Nearly all of the fish bigger than 12" or so I catch on small streams are subsurface.

Have no clue where the Browns came from, because the receiving stream seems quite impaired, and I suspect the fish in this stream are isolated at the moment. Good lesson to be learned here...Recovering AMD streams are often re-populated by Brook Trout first...They have better low PH tolerance than Browns. Yet as the watershed recovers, Browns find their way in and begin to take over. It's important to not stock, or otherwise introduce Browns in these recovery scenarios, if possible.

Was a little disappointed to not find any Brookies, but this was my best day Trout fishing this Summer in a good long while. Water temp was 58F, and though the flow was relatively low, good habitat and Browns behaving like Brookies made for some fun fishing.

A Wegmans "Danny's Favorite" is also a Swattie favorite for a streamside lunch.

 

[lycoflyfisher]

I have an idea of what watershed you were in, one thing to keep in mind for recovering AMD streams is that treatment systems can be treating different proportions of the impaired discharge at different flow levels. For example, a treatment system may have only been able to collect 70 percent of a discharge, and at different flows there may not be enough clean surface water to overcome the remaining 30% of the discharge. AMD treatment can be extremely complex depending on how much of the discharge can be collected and treated. Those are some great looking brown trout.

 

[coyoterahn]

Beautiful fish there Swattie!

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

I fish coal country a lot.
What you describe is very common or becoming more so.
All of your post sounds likes some of my trips.
I even bet i have fished where you were.
Still a great place to fish .

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Brown trout are a very bad threat to brook trout all over that region.

 

[Swattie87]

Edit/Update:

After a PM exchange with Mike about this stream, it turns out I misread the report, and/or the maps, or both. Confirmed after a re-review of both. The Class B Brookie trib from the report is in a different part of the watershed, though it has a very similar name to the stream I fished yesterday. Easy mistake. The stream I fished isn’t on the nat repro list, yet. Rather be lucky than good, I guess?

Anyway, the original point of the thread, still remains true. The Browns I found surely displaced Brookies at some point, even if they weren’t documented.

 

[wildtrout2]

Interesting stuff right there. You've been doing well this season, considering some of the crazy conditions we've had.

 

[Swattie87]

wildtrout2 wrote:
Interesting stuff right there. You've been doing well this season, considering some of the crazy conditions we've had.

It’s been a down year for sure, in comparison to 2018 and 2019, especially. Felt like I hit home runs just about every time out those years. Got spoiled with good conditions.

Had a couple big days this year but for the most part I’ve just been trying to make the best of the hand dealt. A half dozen Browns was a slow day in 2018/2019, but these were all solid fish and made for a great day, by 2020 small stream standards.

 

[scs_browntrout]

Great pics swattie87! Was the terrain tough? Just curious what makes the stream orange?


scs

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

WV has great example of excellent fish barren habitat.
Swattie nice pics and great to see people gettin after them!

 

[Swattie87]

scs_browntrout wrote:
Great pics swattie87! Was the terrain tough? Just curious what makes the stream orange?


scs

Thanks. Not too bad. It was a small, fairly steep stream. A lot of climbing over blow downs and stuff, but not all that bad.

Acid Mine Drainage is the cause of the orange streambed and lack of fish in the receiving stream.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Same in WV. Tried many streams that just would be wonderful it wasnt for mine drainage.

You know how i feel. I see it as clean up and restore brook trout possibilities. Unfortunately the sad reality is browns can kill it at times.

 

[Fly-Swatter]

As I understand it, the orange is caused by dissolved iron in the discharge. When the iron mixes with dissolved oxygen in the surface water, it turns to rust and precipitates. This can be seen on Google Satellite showing the Old Forge borehole site: Here

 

[Fredrick]

So weird I thought Brown Trout were naturalized and the damage was done already . I guess this goes without saying that if you released a brown trout in your lifetime you are no better than me for releasing a snakehead . Don't be a hypocrite...……………..

 

[afishinado]

Fredrick wrote:
So weird I thought Brown Trout were naturalized and the damage was done already . I guess this goes without saying that if you released a brown trout in your lifetime you are no better than me for releasing a snakehead . Don't be a hypocrite...……………..

Actually, brown trout are proven to displace our native brook trout, while snakeheads are only surmised to harm native fish populations.

So you are better, Fred!

 

[scs_browntrout]

thanks swattie87 for the info!

 

[Mike]

Rather than displacement of ST, it is conceivable given the circumstances in this specific case that it could have been replacement of ST. Yes, I have chosen my words wisely.

 

[lycoflyfisher]

I know there are some enthusiastic folks that take pride in stocking brown trout in the Schuylkill/ Little Schuylkill watershed in recovering AMD streams. I won't name TU chapters, sportsmans groups etc but they are fairly vocal on some of the facebook trout fishing pages.

 

[Chaz]

A stream I fished about 3 weeks ago in it’s lower section of about 1/2 mile and never caught a brown in has now changed over to browns, lots of them. In this case I believe the issue is a modern sewage treatment plant. The receiving stream had a mixed population but as far as I know never had a lot of browns but maybe Mike knows better. I plan on going back to fish above where I stopped fishing last time.

 

[Troy]

Fredrick wrote:
So weird I thought Brown Trout were naturalized and the damage was done already . I guess this goes without saying that if you released a brown trout in your lifetime you are no better than me for releasing a snakehead . Don't be a hypocrite...……………..

Blah, blah, Snakeheads, blah, blah.

One good thing about you fishing for those ugly *** fish is that there is one less person on trout streams. Keep on fishing that **** water! Have at it!