Fishing Creek, Lancaster County 4/23

[larkmark]

The conservancy property is more or less right along a road. Probably suffers from being close to road. It is mostly shallow but has a few holes and a few trout. Biggest I caught there was maybe 12". I don't go there much these days.

 

[Mike]

OK, Drumore Park. Seemed like the best habitat was in the rocky outcrop area at the upper end of the more manicured section of the park. There should be wild trout in the park stretch.

 

[salmonoid]

wbranch wrote:
Where is Spring Creek in Lancaster?

]

The big spring is coming out of the little spring house on the left. The rest of the stream comes from behind you, on the left, but it's usually a dry wash most of the time. Definite little limestoner. Directly downstream from this (to the right), tons and tons of legacy sediment were removed from the floodplain, in an attempt (I believe) to see what happened to the course of the stream that flows through it.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Lancaster is loaded with little spring creeks like Big Spring.
Nearly all of them so damaged, or dry up that they do not hold trout. However a few do.
The ones that do are ok and overlooked.

If Lancaster was never farmed, degraded and had trees cut (debateable how many where in the Valley but certainly trees were removed) its larger mid size streams could of held a tremendous brook trout fishery.

Lots of limestone influence. Just sediment degrading habitat/redds and temps holding it back.

Keep in mind, even if trees were planted, streams restored, sediment removed and floodplains restored it would take 100's of years for the krast aquifers to clean the nitrate out the conduits enough to make fish eggs more viable.
That comes from our watershed specialist Matt Kofroth, regarding Lititz Runs headwaters and the huge farms in Manheim that make the underground aquifer.

You can assume this as happened to many of our mid valley limestoners.

All that said, you dont give up.

 

[troutbert]

salvelinusfontinalis wrote:

Keep in mind, even if trees were planted, streams restored, sediment removed and floodplains restored it would take 100's of years for the krast aquifers to clean the nitrate out the conduits enough to make fish eggs more viable.

That comes from our watershed specialist Matt Kofroth, regarding Lititz Runs headwaters and the huge farms in Manheim that make the underground aquifer.

I wonder what is the basis for his 100s of years claim regarding nitrates in the aquifer.

Researchers at Penn State found that it takes 10 years for water to travel underground through the aquifer from the Barrens State Gamelands area west of State College to the Big Spring in Bellefonte. The distance there is probably about 15 miles. It's a large watershed.

The explanation given as to why it took such a long time was not just the distance, but that it was a tight formation, without solution channels, so the water moved slowly through the rocks.

Ten years is a long time for water to travel through the aquifer. He seems to be inferring that it takes centuries for the water to travel through the aquifers in Lancaster County. I'm skeptical about that. But interested in hearing more info about it, if available.

If there were good riparian buffers and farming practices that greatly reduced nutrient inputs, I think the groundwater nitrate levels would drop in a much shorter time.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

He is saying it will take that long for it to wash out the porous krast conduits clean of nitrate.

 

[sarce]

Interesting discussion. I have a hypothetical question. If you were able to reduce water temps on some of these degraded spring creeks, allowing them to carry cold water for miles downstream, would the nitrates still prevent reproduction downstream where it is a higher percentage of surface runoff vs the polluted karst groundwater? Or downstream where cleaner aquifers come in? Then maybe you can still get reproducing trout populations even if the aquifer at the spring source is polluted by nitrates. No idea if such a scenario even exists...

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Dunno.
But interesting question.

As far as Fishing Creek. I would think in the Conservancy Property, narrowing and slightly slowing the flow to increase depth would pair well with big fish habitat.

Its is lacking that there and has minus the nitrate issues.