Which best describes you? -- Wild Trout

[troutbert]

What stream is that in the photo? And why does it look like that?

 

[JackM]

Most stocked trout enthusiasts wouldn't be caught dead on a canal like this:

 

[foxtrapper1972]

It may be a class A but it never fishes very well (at least for me).

 

[pcray1231]

that stream if ever restored to a natural flowing spring with some cover would be a brookie factory.

Perhaps. But it might also just create a series of lakes and marshes and warm up, like the one on the right side of this photo that you can't quite see. Not much drop to it, lol. What, maybe 10 ft at most, over the WHOLE THING?

It might also become a brown trout factory. There's a few already in there.

Normally I'd agree with you, but in this case, if you want it to produce trout, cover would be good to cut down the weeds, but getting rid of the channel may not be. It's fine gravel underneath. Allowing it to slow may make it mud. Or mud bottomed lake.

TB, it looks like that because it was artificially channeled years ago by the CCC. Pretty much a square cross section, it's pretty deep. It is class A. Beyond that I don't want to publicize it, so PM incoming.

I was using it as the counter example to FD's wide and shallow stream that gets artificially penalized by the PFBC's rating system due to their use of surface area. This one's deep and narrow and gets artificially enhanced by the same system.

Cross section is a better measurement of stream size than surface area. This is a bigger stream than surface area would have you believe.

 

[pcray1231]

Fox, thanks for the edit to get rid of the ID info.

No, it never fishes well, but I usually do catch fish. And there was, at one time, a very large brown trout who had a lair, and it was among the worst kept secrets on this board. Many tried, nobody caught it.

I haven't been there in about 6 years, so I'm sure that fish is long gone and I have no idea of the current situation.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

There are variables at play to why it does not fish well.

1) the a lot fish migrate out of the stream into the lake during cooler months and return during the late spring/summer when temps are warm. By this time the summer sun has the stream extra choked full of weeds.

2) the population has declined because of loss of spawning habitat due to poor substrate and weeds. I have little doubt it is below class a now.

Pat,

We would likely have to disagree on the return of a natural streambed an the effects it may have. The stream is short and would not warm too much before it empties into the lake. Moreover a natural meander would give a place for the silt to settle in areas, also the letort has much more muck and the trout do fine there. We will likely never know because it would be costly and I don't see someone taking that challenge.
In all honesty this stream goes to the point about stocking fish over wild trout at points in a season. If this stream was stocked due to lower biomass at some points in the year, the stocked fish would be there when the Brookies return.

Jack,

Because no one stocks or fishes the Lehigh Canal?

 

[Swattie87]

I fished it early this Spring. Skunk was the result. It’s a bit of a novelty more than an actual place to catch fish IMO. Very cool to check out though. I saw some dead sculpins at the Spring source, so I fished a small Bugger. Impossible to get it down in nearly all of the channelized stretch due to the veg, and the free flowing stretch is next to impossible to cast in without standing on top of the fish…which doesn’t work well in gin clear limestone spring water. I had some interest in the one “easy” spot to fish, but didn’t land anything. They appeared to be dark colored Brookies, of approximately legal size.

I had my chest waders on that day and got in in the channelized stretch to see how deep it was…waist deep or so in most spots (I’m 6’0), so perhaps it is filling with sediment if others recollection of it was deeper in times past? In any case, whatever fish are there are very well protected and hard to get to…I can’t imagine there’s a lot of harvest going on. After thinking about it for a while, I suspect the best method on that stream is likely tossing/dapping terrestrials along open spots against the channel walls during the Summer. Haven’t tested it though.

 

[troutbert]

That would be a good place for some stream restoration.

The fact that it's a limestone stream and that it supports wild trout means it has a lot of potential.

It's just that it's physically messed up. But that could be changed.

Maybe some local group would want to work on that.

 

[pcray1231]

double post.

 

[pcray1231]

We would likely have to disagree on the return of a natural streambed an the effects it may have. The stream is short and would not warm too much before it empties into the lake.

I said I didn't know. But keep in mind it's hemmed in by mud ponds to both sides. Wouldn't take much of a meander to actually flow THROUGH those ponds, in which case, yes, it could warm quite quickly (err, in a short distance, anyway). That might really be it's true "natural" state. We'll never know because none of us were around way back when to see what it was originally like. It seems to me that this area was just a huge swamp. And man drained it, leaving lakes and ponds alongside woods and fields. Where springs came out, you had to get the water out of there without re-flooding everything, so they channelized em.

Although I certainly agree that if we wanted to put some work into it, it could be vastly improved as a trout fishery. You tear out the walls, put in some small meanders and rock structure, riparian buffers to provide shade and cut down weeds, but still make sure the stream doesn't break through to those ponds. I just wouldn't call that "natural". More like a manmade trout stream instead of a manmade canal. Per TB's comments, I wouldn't call it "restoration" as much as "creation". Restoration would be making a swamp.

But yeah, you could create quite a trout factory. The raw ingredients needed are there.

When we talk about the changes it's going through, we should keep in mind that this thing was channelized in, what, 1930 something? I don't doubt it's slowly getting worse. But I'd be hardpressed to explain how 5 or 10 years could make a huge difference.

 

[pcray1231]

I suspect the best method on that stream is likely tossing/dapping terrestrials along open spots against the channel walls during the Summer.

I've been told the grasshopper hatch can be good.

 

[troutbert]

pcray1231 wrote:

We would likely have to disagree on the return of a natural streambed an the effects it may have. The stream is short and would not warm too much before it empties into the lake.

I said I didn't know. But keep in mind it's hemmed in by mud ponds to both sides. Wouldn't take much of a meander to actually flow THROUGH those ponds, in which case, yes, it could warm quite quickly (err, in a short distance, anyway). That might really be it's true "natural" state.

The ponds are very likely man-made, not natural features.

In a well funded restoration, the ponds could be eliminated, by draining them, then filling in the depressions and bringing things up to floodplain grade, then re-meandering the channel.

 

[Swattie87]

VERY well funded.

 

[BrookieChaser]

Stenonema wrote:

Isn't it great that in this state we have so much good water that if a population is holding on by a thread we can say screw it.

At what number can your conscience accept the demise of a naturally reproducing population? What is that number? Isn't that the question? Read the question again. At what point is a wild trout special because it is wild? The answer. When there are enough of them to provide us with good fishing and if not, it is acceptable to destroy their future potential for our temporary benefit.


Natural reproduction is the magic and where that happens we need to stop playing God and let there be as many as there should be, where they should be and when they should be there.
Stocking trout creates a lack of respect for the trout and a higher importance on ourselves and I see that as the most damaging effect of stocking trout.

I couldn't agree more, Steno.

I was trying to get to that in my last post, but this (the part I quoted) explains it better.

 

[pcray1231]

The ponds are very likely man-made, not natural features.

Agreed. I think the whole place, naturally, was a swamp. No ponds. No "stream". Just swamp.

See you guys are looking at this as a "channelized stream". I'm telling you that's totally off base. There was naturally no stream at all. What it is, is a drainage ditch DUG out of a swamp.

If you want to drain a swamp, confine all continuous sources of water and channelize them out of the area. Then any remaining wet spots, you dig a depression so that the water can settle, and drain the surrounding land.

Look at the banks. They are actually raised, like levies. So the CCC pinpointed a spring feeding a swamp. They added fill to create a line of dry land so that they could get equipment to the spring. Then they used an excavator to dig out the spring and made a ditch to drain the water out down to the lake. Our stream is that ditch. To keep the walls from collapsing they built rock restraining walls.

Some surrounding area didn't fully dry up, because it was in depressions. So they dug deep depressions so that water would settle, and drain the surrounding area. Those are the ponds.

Again, don't get me wrong, you have a cold, fairly large limestone spring. With enough money, you could create a really good trout fishery here. And I'm not against doing it. I just struggle to claim that it's what nature intended, because I don't picture the natural swamp being trout water at all. I struggle to claim man screwed it up (for trout, anyway, we certainly screwed it up for swamp species). The current artificial habitat is BETTER for trout than nature intended. But it's not nearly as good as it could be. And I'm not even sure it'd be as difficult as Swattie thinks. You could gain a lot just by shading it. Toss a few boulders in it here and there. You probably have to keep the channel, but you could break them out and widen it in places so that it's not so straight and even.

What you don't have is much gradient, and not much you can do about that.

 

[Chaz]

The primary reason the Fish and Boat Commission exists is because of the widespread eradication of brook trout in the native range due mostly to habitat distruction. They were assigned the task to be restore populations of trout as a conservation agency.
The old Fish Commission promptly changed the mission to stocking willy nilly without knowing the impact. Even now that they know the impact it's still pretty much bucket biology.
They should not stock any stream with a wild trout population. Even where marginal populations can be restored with best management practices, that does not include stocking.