Donegal Creek FFO Lancaster County 9/3/2011

[salvelinusfontinalis]

I fished Donegal Creek in the FFO area from 8:30am to 12:00pm today. When I arrived the water had a mist coming off the water and the air was not at all hot yet. Water temp was a cool 57 degrees. It is apparent that this years constant rain fall have been good to some of our trout waters in SEPA, Donegal is rarely in the 50's in Sept.

Irene also has changed the stream dramatically since the last time I fished Donegal. Certain holes are now shallow and others are not, also many large trees had fallen in the wind and are now creating habitat. Also the small bridge upstream of the red horse barn is in the water.

I ended up catching 10 stocked rainbows on BH Olive Woolly Buggers. I caught a few on Beetles. Below is a 15-16 inch wild brown trout I took in a fairly popular stretch on Donegal. This fish was a welcome sight and put up one heck of a fight!

After leaving here I visited Donegal Springs and Charles Run.
I fished some sections of the streams, it is hard to find open water in the headwaters of Donegal. Its a shame too because its an honest to god classic limestone spring. I caught a few trout but nothing spectacular.

I stopped by the Donegal Springs Presbyterian Church where the DCFA holds its annual kids derby. This area is considered a propagation area and is closed to fishing except for the kids derby event. So no fishy! Still some brute Browns and Bows in there. The browns had kypes. Also a few albinos and plenty of brookies.
The one brown was amazing looking. I was tossing small sticks in the water and the fish were going nuts! Even though you cant fish, if your in the area its a nice place to stop and waste 20 mintues. I hope they hold over for next years event!

 

[wgmiller]

Nice to hear. I haven't been down to the stream lately, so I haven't seen the changes you speak of. I can tell you that I did see the stream during Irene and it didn't "blow out" like it has in the past. That perspective was from traveling 772 on a regular basis. It came up, but was well within the banks. We didn't receive the deluge in that area that others did and it was a slower, steadier rain.

The event that really changed the stream occurred on Memorial Day last year (2010). It was an isolated storm that hung in the area for a few hours and completely blew the creek out. There is no doubt that storms change the landscape of that stream on a regular basis. The silt that is produced by those storms also makes fishing a challenge!

As long as those fish don't get poached, they should hold over until the fishing derby in the spring...

 

[iceyguides]

awesome fish sal! Some of the changes in the stream could be from restoration work done in late august. The one picture you have up has some of the restored stream diversion dams in it. Poaching is definetly a problem pretty much everywhere on the stream.

 

[Mike]

Present plans for the C&R area are for it to experimentally be stocked with fingerlings in the near future, with a gradual phasing out of adult stocking until the success or failure of the fingerling program is determined. If it does not work satisfactorily yet the experiment continues for a number of years you may be reminded of some sage advice: be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. If it does work you might be happy or perhaps not. Given the habitat and the typical summer flows and temps, I would not be surprised if the density of adult trout will be less than one sees with adult stocking.

 

[Fishidiot]

Mike wrote:
Present plans for the C&R area are for it to experimentally be stocked with fingerlings in the near future, with a gradual phasing out of adult stocking until the success or failure of the fingerling program is determined. As a rule of thumb, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.

Excellent. 🙂

Hey, it's worth a try. We realize that fingerlings often don't produce enough adult size fish and may not necessarily save the agency money. However, (as you of course know) there have been some great success stories with fingerlings in some of the state's waters and some of these fingerling projects have actually transitioned off to wild or predominately wild trout populations (eg lower Letort and Little J). Whether Donegal has such potential....we'll have to wait and see. If the fingerlings prove a wash, the agency can always return to stocking adult trout.