I wondered why they stopped and I asked the fish commission on multiple occasions and got the normal non answers that I can expect from them. The best I got was that the Conestoga gets muddy and Musky do not like muddy water. I know of multiple streams that get very muddy, including the North Branch of Susquehanna that hold Musky so that makes no sense. I did catch several in the 1980s-1990s. Lost a big one in below Route 23 one time.
If that’s the answer that you received, then it would have been better and accurate to refer you to the AFM office. AFM’s determine what warmwater/coolwater fish get stocked and where. There was one exception though. A number of waters were removed from the tiger and pure musky stocking program when a survey of muskellunge anglers which asked which waters they fished to target muskellunge and hybrids. When waters that were being stocked were not mentioned or were mentioned infrequently, AFM’s were required to remove them from the stocking program.
Just after that period, Rob Wnuk (chief author), Brian Ensign, Rob Brown (I think), and I worked on the statewide muskellunge management plan in which, among many other things, lake trap netting, gill netting, and/or stream/river electrofishing target catches per hour targets were established that surveys must achieve for waters to continue to be stocked. For example, the trap netting catch per hour boils down in laymen terms to 1 muskellunge (or tiger) for ever four trap nets pulled (trap nets avg about 21 hours per set). Waters that don’t make the cut are cut. It would not surprise me if the target for trap net catches has been or will be revised upward in the future given the success of the yearling stockings in producing such good muskellunge populations.
Despite one or two nearly annual reports of tiger muskellunge catches from the Conestoga when it was being stocked, it was either not mentioned or mentioned infrequently in the angler survey. I had no choice but to remove the Conestoga from the stocking program so that other, apparently more deserving waters, could continue to receive fish or the proper number of fish. Within or somewhat prior to that time period I also removed Maiden Creek’s and Manatawny Creeks mouth areas as well as Perkiomen Creek and, as I recall, a lower Schuylkill R Section that extended downstream from Norristown Dam.
Such actions became even more critical when the agency switched from fall stockings of 6-9” fingerlings to late spring stockings of 10-14” yearlings, which produce much better survival on average by, for example, making them much less vulnerable to largemouth bass predation. Additionally, they are stocked in alternate years at a lower rate than in the past. Their yearling size also makes them less vulnerable to cannibalism by the previous year’s fish when stocked annually. I’ll add that this has been so successful in Pa and in Wisconsin that AFM’s speak of cutting the stocking rates or frequencies back in certain waters so that growth will not be affected by abundance.
The stocking of larger muskellunge started in Area 6 thanks to Muskies Inc coordinating with the AFM. The club purchased pure muskellunge from a private Wisconsin hatchery and initially stocked them in Marsh Creek Lk followed a few yrs later by Nockamixon. The extremely positive results as reflected in the fish population survey data from Nock and the muskellunge angler catches/praises at and of Marsh Creek Lk proved to the PFBC hatchery system that larger muskellunge produced better success and the system answered the challenge by experimenting with and developing techniques to produce such a product.
As for Conestoga specifics, the two and only areas from which I heard of catches were in the short stretch below the Lancaster Waterworks Dam along Rt 23 near Rt 30 and in the vicinity of the Lancaster Sewage Treatment Plant at the lower end of town. A tiger could remain in the Conestoga from those stockings, but it would be much more likely to find tigers or pures that have escaped over the dam from Speedwell Forge Lake downstream in the Hammer, Cocalico or Conestoga.
Speedwell was stocked because extra fish were available when the lake was being refilled. They were apparently successful, so the present AFM continued stocking. In the past (1980’s) stocking had limited success because of bass predation on the smaller fingerlings of that time period and I believed over the dam escapement. Middle Creek Lake, Lanc Co would be too warm and access to most of the lake is poor, including no boating.
