Schuylkill R fingerling stocking: field observations

[Mike]

The fingerling browns (3.5 inches) that were stocked yesterday in the Schuylkill River behaved pretty normally, although I found their spacing in the stream interesting. After 1.5 hrs a group was spaced out on a 15 ft long by 3 ft wide sand bar adjacent to a deeper pool and each fish was about 8 inches from the other in all directions. They were in about a foot of water and rising to drift. When approached they would all scatter, indicating that they were not habituated to humans once they hit the river. These fish had never been outside before, as they were raised in "troughs" in a hatch building and had been hand fed, yet they almost immediately began feeding on drifting midges and any earthworm that was thrown to them, as well as avoiding humans.

They also attracted the attention of an 18 inch brown from the near-by pool. That fish made high velocity foraging runs across the sand bar and along it length. A person could not have turned the crank of a spinning reel fast enough for that brown to not be able to catch up with a devour a lure.

 

[salmo]

Where did this stocking occur?

 

[Chaz]

And people wonder why fingerling stockings in PA are not successful. That's for the info Mike, I'm going to take my fingerling brown streams up to the Schuylkill and catch me some wild brookies and browns with them.

 

[Fishidiot]

How's that for introducing little trout while making the big trout bigger at the same time? :lol:

Sounds like good management to me.

 

[HopBack]

Mike can correct me if I'm wrong but the fingerling stockings on most streams are done to test a hypothesis. Ex: stocked fingerling trout can provide a sustainable fishery given hat x environmental conditions are present. We often gripe about fingerling stockings in areas that we don't believe will succeed but it is necessary to stock these areas for a certain period of time to obtain a viable data set. in most cases the results is are as expected but sometimes the hypothesis is proved and the data can be used to predict which locations are more likely to respond well to this type of stocking. The PFBC surely expects some of these areas to fail.

 

[troutwilleatflies]

Since Mike saw a 18' brown chasing the fingerlings I would think previous stockings of fingerlings were successful.

 

[The_Sasquatch]

They were successful, and you can catch the results of those stockings, both browns and bows.

 

[troutbert]

troutwilleatflies wrote:
Since Mike saw a 18' brown chasing the fingerlings I would think previous stockings of fingerlings were successful.

Not necessarily. There may have been wild browns in the watershed since the late 1800s or early 1900s, and that brown may have been one of their descendants.

I guy told me in April 1997 about catching brown trout fairly regularly in the Schuykill River. (I keep notes; my memory is not that good!) I don't know when the fingerling stocking began.

 

[HopBack]

Mike stated in another post that the stockings began in 1991.

 

[Mike]

HopBack:

Sorry, I was wrong. It was 2001, not 1991, and there were some (few) wild browns present when we first surveyed the river in 2000 or 2001.

 

[PASKIINGSUCKS]

I take it this is well above reading??? Anybody know how warm that river gets mid summer? I boated it this weekend and was pretty surprised at how low yet fairly cool it was. It's still early june though....

 

[Mike]

Lower end of Schuylkill Haven to near Pottsville.

 

[RyanR]

salmo wrote:
Where did this stocking occur?

Truck chaser! :lol:

 

[Chaz]

It's between Pottsville and Schuylkill Haven, and there have been browns and brookies in that section for a fairly long time. And the brookies like the fingerlings too.
You've changed from browns and bows to just browns? Those bows that used to be stocked got quite big. The section gets into the low 70's.