What does it take to support wild brownies

[troutbert]

That is possible but I would think something else also. I have seen some horribly degraded and silty limestone springs hold a good head of brown trout.

I agree. Poor spawning habitat because of siltation will not generally result in a no trout situation. They can spawn somewhere, even it's not right in that stretch. It doesn't take much spawning habitat to sustain a population. If there is good spring water flows and good depth and cover, the wild trout should be there.

But it's very difficult trying to analyze a stream without knowing the location, or even photos. If I knew the location, I might be able to come up with something.

 

[jifigz]

That is possible but I would think something else also. I have seen some horribly degraded and silty limestone springs hold a good head of brown trout.

That's is true. Me too. That's why I'm perplexed on this one.

 

[Fish Sticks]

That's is true. Me too. That's why I'm perplexed on this one.

How hard is this place to get back into?

 

[jifigz]

How hard is this place to get back into?

Not hard at all. It flows through an agricultural community. It's not deep off roads/through thick forests or anything.

 

[Fish Sticks]

Not hard at all. It flows through an agricultural community. It's not deep off roads/through thick forests or anything.

You should try spotting browns at night with an extremely high powered light. Start downstream, move upstream into position, turn on light in tailouts, flats and riffles and aim light behind you as you advance so when you move up to next apot you want to check they don’t scatter from light before in your line of sight. I do this with no fishing rod often after I get my *ss kicked night fishing to determine if nobody hungry or nobody home since at night you tend to cover shorter beats of water. I also do this to learn about forage which helps me pick where in the column i present the flies.

If there are browns in there your shot at seeing them out and about is probably at night with a light. It can help you know which areas to focus daytime efforts on too. In my experience top tier fish sit in much shallower/visible areas at night it will really suprise you where they hangout if their there.

 

[sixfootfenwick]

You should try spotting browns at night with an extremely high powered light. Start downstream, move upstream into position, turn on light in tailouts, flats and riffles and aim light behind you as you advance so when you move up to next apot you want to check they don’t scatter from light before in your line of sight. I do this with no fishing rod often after I get my *ss kicked night fishing to determine if nobody hungry or nobody home since at night you tend to cover shorter beats of water. I also do this to learn about forage which helps me pick where in the column i present the flies.

If there are browns in there your shot at seeing them out and about is probably at night with a light. It can help you know which areas to focus daytime efforts on too. In my experience top tier fish sit in much shallower/visible areas at night it will really suprise you where they hangout if their there.

This is true. I also see a lot of big browns in the Letort before the sun comes up but just at daybreak when you can barely see. You got about a good 30minutes to an hour before they go hide for the day.

 

[krayfish2]

As already mentioned....

* Lack of habitat / sufficient cover

* Low dissolved oxygen levels

* Lack of forage base

Also the off chance that it holds a couple of really big (mostly nocturnal) browns that have cleared out 90% of the smaller fish. Try walking the banks slowly with an old broom handle or something that you can poke around in cover or undercut banks. If you don't move something bigger, would guess the habitat probably won't support them. Fish have a funny way of finding habitat where they shouldn't be.

 

[Nymph-wristed]

I think a lot of folks covered my non-scientific thoughts, and krayfish2 summed them up nicely AND added the one thing I would have added. There is a chance that fish move around a lot in this watershed. There are spots on wild reproduction creeks in SEPA where I once swore there were no fish, and then I found that those areas held the alpha or something close. In other words, dinks were on high alert not to get got or got out of that area. Big fish act weird, especially browns, act even weirder too.... If no bugs, they are getting by on largemouth bass forage!

You often can't keep the smalls off your hook this time of year, right? So those smalls might be all near where the fish spawn. Mike has said it only takes two to sustain a decent population at times. The rest of the crick could have low density and maybe much bigger fish whose habits are different as I noted above (and krayfish too with the night thing). I would not give up on it for that reason. Look around in early winter for redds, fish those deep featureless places in late winter, basically try in another season or keep looking for the stretch that holds the majority of fish this time of year?

I am with you too with the comment about how some creeks look terrible and get beat up by storms/silt and still seem to hold fish. And then ones that look good hold nothing. Quite the adventure you went on. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Prospector]

It sounds like it’s not a fun stream to fish. There may be a code to be cracked there, which could enhance your experience but why bother. Go somewhere else where you can just enjoy the day.

 

[Oregon_OwlII]

This thread is not about finding good wild trout water, I know plenty of those places and how to find more. This thread is not about brook trout and what it takes to sustain them, so please don't bring them up. I also don't want to discuss the virtues of brook trout, the loss of them, the evil brown trout that has displaced them, yada, yada, yada. This thread is about brown trout in a valley stream setting that is, basically, a spring creek/limestoner/heavily limestone influenced stream. On Wednesday I did some exploring in places I usually don't go and the results were on par with what I have discovered in the past, and this is why I typically don't go exploring these areas. But eventually I go back during the hottest part of the year when flows are low and waters are warm to look for, identify, and find cold water with wild browns.

So Wednesday I left my house early and was on the stream by like 8:30. I went to a spring that I knew about. Above where the spring (which is a small one) enters the larger creek, the water was 72 degrees and I didn't even really fish. I walked around a bit, looked at stuff, decided it was frog water, and went downstream. Below the stream, and for a good long ways down, the stream was 64 degrees. I explored, I fished, I caught wild browns. I didn't tear them up, I had to work for them, but the experiment was a success. I was ideally just looking for water that held good temperature and has wild trout in it. In this area the stream is a little bit rough and tumbly, and kind of like a mini Penns or a Little J type of deal.

Satisfied, I head up stream several miles on the same stream. Here the water is a lot of flat water, meandering with little to no riffles. It has a characteristic that nearly screams "HEY, I AM A CLASSIC SPRING CREEK!" The water was 67 degrees which is a touch warm, but just barely fishable for my day of exploring. For weather and air temps in the 90's this is plenty cold enough to sustain wild browns as is confirmed in many streams. I turned up no wild trout. None. And I never do. I mean, they have to be there, right? This stream is listed on the PFBC natural reproduction list. It does suffer from sedimentation problems, but still...no trout?

Now, I have explored this area upstream this far before, but in slightly different spots. I just don't get it. I put in hours and hours that day, about 9, and just come up short. The adventure is part of the fun, the lack of success is both defeating but always makes me want to go back and keep looking in different places. Only given so much time to fish in life, though, it is hard to justify heading to places that have sucked in the past when I know of other good streams that I can have a great time on. The other odd thing: I know of quality wild brown trout streams that appear to be much worse trout streams than this one. I know of streams that seem like they shouldn't have wild trout and they are packed full of them.

So, what do you folks think are the number one reason why wild trout are not thriving where you expected they would be? Sediment? Contamination? I am just not sure.

Weird thing, but I did find about 8 LMB swimming in this creek......

Temperature in the hottest part of the afternoon (2-4 PM) will tell you a lot about a stream's trout carrying capacity. The second is visually assessment. IF it has a good riparian buffer offering plenty of shade, that is a positive, but not the be all and end all. If it has good cobble in the stream bed, turn over rocks to check for bug life Look on a topo map in that watershed. If large ponds or lakes provide outlet feeders to the stream, it is most often doomed. French Creek in Chester County is the perfect example of a good looking, fertile stream, but its headwaters in Berks start at French Creek State Park, where lakes warm the water to bass friendly temps, but no wild trout. The PF&BC listing of trout Reproduction waters is your cheat sheet, but not a guarantee. It's added to every year by new surveys.

 

[TheBluegillMaster]

What effect does impervious surface in the watershed have to do with its ability to maintain a trout population? I have heard numerous times that Brookies die off when it’s around 2-4 percent. Haven’t read anything for browns yet. Also, sorry to take away from OP, but what affect does geology have on trout? A lot of local streams near me are underlain by phylite. Is that any good?

 

[troutbert]

Temperature in the hottest part of the afternoon (2-4 PM) will tell you a lot about a stream's trout carrying capacity. The second is visually assessment. IF it has a good riparian buffer offering plenty of shade, that is a positive, but not the be all and end all. If it has good cobble in the stream bed, turn over rocks to check for bug life Look on a topo map in that watershed. If large ponds or lakes provide outlet feeders to the stream, it is most often doomed. French Creek in Chester County is the perfect example of a good looking, fertile stream, but its headwaters in Berks start at French Creek State Park, where lakes warm the water to bass friendly temps, but no wild trout. The PF&BC listing of trout Reproduction waters is your cheat sheet, but not a guarantee. It's added to every year by new surveys.

The question about ponds is a good one. The presence of largemouth bass in a small stream strongly suggests the possibility of a pond.

 

[Fish Sticks]

What effect does impervious surface in the watershed have to do with its ability to maintain a trout population? I have heard numerous times that Brookies die off when it’s around 2-4 percent. Haven’t read anything for browns yet. Also, sorry to take away from OP, but what affect does geology have on trout? A lot of local streams near me are underlain by phylite. Is that any good?

I have seen that statistic as well. It is however erroneous in many cases, thank god. Brookies would be in even more trouble if that was the case. This idea that such a small percentage of agricultural land use or impervious surface in a watershed is prohibitive to brook trout comes for Dr. Mark Hudy’s 2008 region wide status assessment of brook trout which used factors like forest canopy, development, roads/sediment ect to predict presence of brook trout to an extent because most states(especially PA) did not know for sure how much brook trout they had. The results of this modeling is what perpetuates the stat you mentioned. However, admittedly even by Hudy, there was no way to factor in Groundwater into that modeling because we don’t have good mapping abilities yet for ground water input, allthough it is an area of active research.

With ground water in the equation we see much different results. There are brook trout streams running through fully paved downtown areas in certain places in PA, some where the headwaters are just a concrete culvert that runs the length of a town. I caught a brook trout in a McDonalds. Parking lot 2 years ago. But in these streams you have natural or artificial ground water sources.

What’s interesting is mines create artificial groundwater sources and, to a varying extent, keep the brown trout out in some cases because of acidic Ph the brookies tolerate better. So this concrete culvert stream that sustains brookies and has a small amount of artificial ground water can sustain brook trout and brown trout found there are really only stocked but then you have huge spring creeks with even more ground water that are colder without the low PH from mine drainage that don’t sustain brook trout but have other trout species there instead. That should tell you something about what the limiting issue might be😉

To sustain wild brown trout the temperature requirements are almost the same. There is evidence brook trout may be better silt spawners given their ability to spawn in ponds but I am not sure when silt comes into play to sustain wild browns not. As mentioned they may not necessarily reproduce in a silty spring creek they occupy(temps suitable everywhere else in november) or they may use a small gravelly section I do not know.

As far as the brook trout perceptions like the one you mentioned I tried to create science communication material to debunk some of the pessimistic myths about brook trout like that one.

Brook trout myths and urban legends podcast

PA NFC Board Member James Suleski Talks Brook Trout with Rob Snowhite — Native Fish Coalition

Pennsylvania NFC board member Dr. James Suleski talks brook trout with Rob Snowhite on Fly Fishing Consultant podcast.…

nativefishcoalition.org

Pennsylvania Isn't Doing Enough for its Floundering Native Brook Trout - Fly Fisherman

Disjointed habitat improvements won't save Pennsylvania's brook trout. We need watershed-wide management, and we need to stop stocking invasive species.

www.flyfisherman.com

Works Cited: Sources From James Suleski's Story - Fly Fisherman

Links and sources for his article on watershed-wide management and why we need to stop stocking invasive species.

www.flyfisherman.com

 

[jifigz]

I know I am being secretive about the watershed and this is purposeful. I will give details, however.

There is hardly any paved/hard surfaces in the upper watershed where I was. It is agricultural land, so no hard surfaces but siltation is a problem. Also, water temps were 67 at 3 in the afternoon....that ain't bad. There are no ponds or dams on the watershed/tributaries that I am aware of (as in damming the actual flow) but there are farm ponds within 50 yards of the stream, so a flood event could connect the pond to the flowing stream, thereby allowing species such as LMB in.

Also, the stream is listed on the natural reproduction list for trout. The stream has depth and some cover. I know there are wild trout there, just not many. The thing that boggles my mind is that I have found thriving populations in habitat that seems far, far worse. This is the enigma of this situation. I can see the potential and why there should be more fish, but there just aren't.

I go every couple of years and always leave scratching my head, hoping for a different outcome.

 

[Fish Sticks]

I know I am being secretive about the watershed and this is purposeful. I will give details, however.

There is hardly any paved/hard surfaces in the upper watershed where I was. It is agricultural land, so no hard surfaces but siltation is a problem. Also, water temps were 67 at 3 in the afternoon....that ain't bad. There are no ponds or dams on the watershed/tributaries that I am aware of (as in damming the actual flow) but there are farm ponds within 50 yards of the stream, so a flood event could connect the pond to the flowing stream, thereby allowing species such as LMB in.

Also, the stream is listed on the natural reproduction list for trout. The stream has depth and some cover. I know there are wild trout there, just not many. The thing that boggles my mind is that I have found thriving populations in habitat that seems far, far worse. This is the enigma of this situation. I can see the potential and why there should be more fish, but there just aren't.

I go every couple of years and always leave scratching my head, hoping for a different outcome.

Farm ponds must drain somehow into that stream I would imagine. During blow out summer rains that stream could go way up in temp if those ponds collecting the water and heating it up spill over potentially???

Its always gotta be one of the five factor components. I always think thats a good place to start considering theses things.

I think you would find this article very helpful in parsing out potential answers to your question about this one stream in particular.

https://www.tu.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TroutHabitat_Dieterman_Mitro_DASymp_Final.pdf

 

[Wild_Trouter]

I know I am being secretive about the watershed and this is purposeful. I will give details, however.

There is hardly any paved/hard surfaces in the upper watershed where I was. It is agricultural land, so no hard surfaces but siltation is a problem. Also, water temps were 67 at 3 in the afternoon....that ain't bad. There are no ponds or dams on the watershed/tributaries that I am aware of (as in damming the actual flow) but there are farm ponds within 50 yards of the stream, so a flood event could connect the pond to the flowing stream, thereby allowing species such as LMB in.

Also, the stream is listed on the natural reproduction list for trout. The stream has depth and some cover. I know there are wild trout there, just not many. The thing that boggles my mind is that I have found thriving populations in habitat that seems far, far worse. This is the enigma of this situation. I can see the potential and why there should be more fish, but there just aren't.

I go every couple of years and always leave scratching my head, hoping for a different outcome.

We've talked about this one. Check your PM.

 

[jifigz]

We've talked about this one. Check your PM.

Oh I know we have.....and I value your opinion. I had to recap though because people make posts and it is indicative that they haven't read all info in the thread. I understand the fair amount of problems it faces in the headwaters as do you. I need to quit wasting my time up there and just write it off for good.

 

[Fish Sticks]

Oh I know we have.....and I value your opinion. I had to recap though because people make posts and it is indicative that they haven't read all info in the thread. I understand the fair amount of problems it faces in the headwaters as do you. I need to quit wasting my time up there and just write it off for good.

You could always call the AFM and get their understanding of the issues in stream…..for what thats worth.

 

[hooker-of-men]

Had one of those days. After striking out on two other streams due to one being blown and one being warm, I returned to this sort of out of the way small stream that gave up absolutely nothing once in the past.

Low 60s, with plenty of shade and cover. Some sandy spots, but definitely not filled with sediment. Water was high and slightly stained, but it looked fully fishy, as it has in the past.

Hopper/dropper moved one fingerling of unknown species. I couldn't even spook a sizable fish.

Always fun driving around for 2 hours to take a spanking.

Just needed a place to vent.

 

[wildtrout2]

I had a day just like that recently, but I had more road time invested. 🙂 I'll take low water rather than high water every time. It's always nice to get away though.