Spring Creek

[greenghost]

FrankTroutAngler wrote:
Do the USGS water gauges support Tim's theory?

You can actually look at the historical data on USGS Spring Creek going way back. It requires some effort and I did it quite a few years ago (at least 10) to settle a bet. I found that, on average, the volume of water has NOT decreased going back into the late 50's. In fact--and things may have changed recently-- the lowest water period was in the 60s.

If anyone wants to, they can check it out. Punch in the right parameters on the USGS site and do some mean averaging.

Selective memory is a tricky thing. I thought for sure it would show a drop in levels over the decades. I was wrong.

btw, my avatar shows the way I feel about Spring Creek fish... I've been using it for years

 

[TimMurphy]

flyguyfishing wrote:
Not really. Tough to share here, but I choose monthly time series from gage in Axeman on SC. It produced a table with months as columns and years as rows. 1940, October to today. No trend apparent. Seasonality, yes.

I agree with Tim; I think there is less water. The official data does not support it though.

I agree with others of reduced amount of big fish. The data does not support this either.

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/monthly/?referred_module=sw&site_no=01546500&por_01546500_118935=1821078,00060,118935,1940-10,2021-02&format=html_table&date_format=YYYY-MM-DD&rdb_compression=file&submitted_form=parameter_selection_list

Dear flyguy and Frank Nale,

You need to remember that CFS is a measure of flow rate. You can have 75 cfs coming out of a 36" pipe, or you could have 75 cfs flowing across a stream 50 yards wide and 6 feet deep. It has no relation to water volume.

Gauge height is based on the position of the gauge. Almost all gauges are placed well within the confines of the streambed during typical low water events. They will almost always display a reading except during extreme droughts when they sometimes show zero or a negative number.

You really need to walk Spring Creek to see the historical stream bed. In many places it's been replaced by grasses, cat tails, or multi-flora rose.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

 

[troutbert]

greenghost wrote:

FrankTroutAngler wrote:
Do the USGS water gauges support Tim's theory?

You can actually look at the historical data on USGS Spring Creek going way back. It requires some effort and I did it quite a few years ago (at least 10) to settle a bet. I found that, on average, the volume of water has NOT decreased going back into the late 50's. In fact--and things may have changed recently-- the lowest water period was in the 60s.

If anyone wants to, they can check it out. Punch in the right parameters on the USGS site and do some mean averaging.

Selective memory is a tricky thing. I thought for sure it would show a drop in levels over the decades. I was wrong.

Large amounts of water are pumped out of the groundwater. The largest well fields are in the Slab Cabin Run drainage. The water travels in pipes to homes, businesses and Penn State. Then the water goes down drains and flows in pipes again and flows into the creek at the sewage plant discharge, which is upstream of where 90% of the people fish.

How much loss is there in this system? Some. Evaporation from lawn watering, mostly. But the great majority of that water ends up back in the creek.

Slab Cabin Run probably suffers the most from groundwater pumping. The sewage plant now pumps treated water part way back up Slab Cabin to an area near Hills Plaza, which has benefitted flow in that stream.

Regarding Spring Creek narrowing. I've fished and explored Spring Creek a lot since fall 1987. I haven't noticed it narrowing. I wish it would narrow. It's excessively wide in many places because of various disturbances.

In Fishermans Paradise, you can see in old photos that is was MUCH wider way back in the day, because the Paradise was basically a series of dams back then. But they've been gone a long time.

But the Paradise is not representative of Spring Creek.

 

[Mike]

If it has gotten wider in places, that has the potential to decrease habitat for larger fish in those areas. For most streams a good rule of thumb is that large fish habitat is determined in great part by the ratio of width to depth. One does not want to see high ratios. Some examples: In addition to an excellent forage base and little competition for large wild Browns due to very substantial harvest of stocked trout, Logan Branch in its prime displayed low width to depth ratios throughout much of its length. Other examples are streams with segments commonly referred to as "the narrows." Also think of where the high number of trophy size trout are found in the Letort (not in the special reg area).

 

[larkmark]

I used to fish the spot along Spring Creek Rd where the large parking lot lot is with the sign and bench. There is a wetland thee and hiking trail with boardwalk along creek. This is a ways downstream from paradise. The last times I went there it didn't seem to have many fish at all. It used to be a great spot even along road just down from parking lot. I know they built some kind of handicap structure there a few yrs ago. I went there a few evenings during sulfurs and no one was fishing and no fish were coming up which is very unusual. I don't get the feeling that fish are evenly distributed in that creek even when habitat appears to be similar.