Willow creek, berks county

[Jessed]

Anyone have info on willow creek? I never hear anything about it. I drive by it going to the cabelas and always look over and it looks pretty decent. I saw they stock Brookies in it and the lower end is class a where it dumps into the skuke. Any info would be appreciated! Thanks Jesse!

 

[Mike]

Population crashed. Now a Class D equivalent where it was supporting a much higher biomass before.

 

[Jessed]

It looked a little big for a Brookie stream in pa

 

[troutbert]

What caused the population to crash?

 

[pcray1231]

Don't know the answer to that.

Right near the bottom it turns into a limestone stream. Couple of big limestone springs. Good trico hatch. Used to hold some bigger fish that I originally thought were stocky holdovers that came down from above and then held at the springs. Fat 10-12 inchers with little heads, all bunched up. I'd catch those and then a bunch of little 4-5 inchers that were more normal looking, but small wild brookies. And absolutely nothing in between, lol. Where were the 6-9 inch fish?

Others with some knowledge told me the bigger fish were actually wild, and I began to believe them. If that's the case, the lack of medium sized fish made me wonder. Do they grow really quick and hence there's that much separation between year classes? Were we missing a year class?

In any case, it was a rather isolated situation. Short distance. i.e. typically the type of thing where it doesn't take all that much to ruin it. I can't imagine there was more than 1 or 2 spawning beds down there, a downed tree in the wrong spot could put a hurting on them!

But I haven't been there in years and I don't know what it was that happened.

 

[steveo]

A new development was built right next to the stream. I would guess that that may have contributed to the decline. Lots of additional warm runoff carrying pesticides, road salt, etc.

 

[Chaz]

Stockies can't get to the lower end where the limestones springs are because of intermittent sinking of the water beneath the stream bed. I don't think that is what the problem is, I think the problem is floods, and lawn fertilizers washing into the stream from development in the area that the stream flows through.
I was there last week and saw a ton of small trout so they are still there. Problem is it's all on private land and much of it is posted.
When the population was good the growth rate was quite good, and a 1 y old fish would be 7 inches to about 10 inches and on the high side of that. The mid range fish are absent because of cannibalism. The brookies there don't take dry flies well when there aren't bugs coming off. The big brookies were only there because no one was fishing the stream.

 

[Jessed]

That's a damn shame

 

[Chaz]

The good news is that I stop by every fall to look for spawning brookies and they are there. They spawn in November.

 

[Jessed]

That's always good seeing fish spawning. They stock maiden creek right? If so don't you think when it gets warm they start to move up into willow with the springs you mentioned?

 

[pcray1231]

Couple problems there.

First, they stock Maiden with browns and bows, not brookies. The fish in question were brookies.

Second, there's a little dam on Willow right near it's confluence with Maiden, which may explain why there aren't browns and bows in there from Maiden.

 

[Jessed]

Below the damn might still be holding Browns and bows. It's probably still cold below the damn.

 

[Jessed]

Below the damn might still be holding Browns and bows. It's probably still cold below the dam.

 

[pcray1231]

Yeah, it certainly could be, at least at certain times of the year. The dam is like right at the mouth, so there isn't much water below it, and it might be posted. I'd have to check. I've never actually SEEN the dam, other than on satellite images, and I have fished the very upper end of the dam pool.

 

[Jessed]

How'd it fish?

 

[Chaz]

I have never seen or caught any trout or other species in the section below the dam. They may be there though. Maiden Creek is not stocked below the reservoir. But occasionally trout are caught in the reservoir so they may get into the lower creek. There are walleyes, pike and muskies in the creek.

 

[tomgamber]

I grew up a short bike ride from here. Cherokee Ranch if you're a local. In the mid to late 1970s we used to fish from a little wooden bridge made of RR ties.
Coming from 222 we took a right after crossing the creek, the bridge couldn't have been more then a couple hundred yards upstream.
The stream flowed to us from what seemed like impenetrable brush. We sat on the bridge and fished with corn and worms and such. a couple of huge carp lived under the bridge and we laughed about what would happen if we actually hooked one. We caught a few brookies, fall fish, chubs, sunnies, suckers, the occasional lost rainbow and some small bullheads but we always caught fish.
As the cars drove over the bridge, the ties moved like piano keys, lifting us up one at a time. It was hilarious. one day they replaced that little wooden bridge with a concrete one and we never caught much after that.
We moved to fishing under the railroad tubes and found suckers and trout easy pickins in the slow water under the arches.
I heard they put some kind of pumping station up in that tangle of brush and it warmed the creek but that's just hearsay. Didn't really fish much again until after high school.

 

[Chaz]

This is an example of an average sized brookie from back in the good ole days of 2005.

 

[Jessed]

That's ashame! I was 6 years old when you caught that LOL

 

[pcray1231]

Chaz, wow. The ones I was catching down there didn't look anything like that. Similar size, but, uh, much more subdued colors, no color in the fins, etc. Hence me thinking they were stockies. I wouldn't mistake that fish for a stocky!

I did accept them as wild because limestone brookies often aren't as brilliantly colored as the freestone fish I'm used to catching. But seeing that has me second guessing.