DaveS wrote:
Regarding the "infertile" description. I personally read that in a report from Rick Lorson, PAFBC coldwater biologist. It was an older report. Maybe somone has a more recent one. The one point that seems evident; it is a better river now than it once was. Perhaps it will contunue that trend.
I've read that report, too. I wonder about the PFBC, though, and how accurate their reports are.
For instance, I ran into a guy from there this summer at a gas station in the morning. He saw the drift boat and came over to say hello and asked where we were fishing. I told him the Yough and he wanted more specificity because he'd been electro-shocking the river. I told him where we were putting in and he said to me that there were very few trout in that section of river. "Not a fishable population" were his exact words.
I thought he must have been joking or mistaken. But he wasn't. I was actually a bit worried. I hadn't been fishing this piece of river because of the low, warm water, but things had changed and I had decided to give it go. So I drove there thinking that maybe the heat or something else had caused a kill this summer. Needless to say, this PFBC guy who was in charge of counting fish on the river was absolutely wrong. Not even in the ballpark.
It was a bluebird day, but in spite of that, after seven hours of fishing, we still put over thirty trout ranging in size from 7-20 inches in the boat So any report that comes out of the FBC on the river is automatically suspect in my opinion. If anyone works for them and would like to comment, feel free. But that that information is going to come out in an official report and that someone got paid to be that incompetent is criminal. Is the whole organization that ineffectual?
As for fertility, if we're using that word to describe hatch density, then no, the river does not compare to some of the better hatch streams and rivers across the state. That being said, there are plenty of bugs, baitfish, crayfish, aquatic annelids, freshwater shrimp, and sowbugs in the river to maintain a nice population of trout and bass that grow to exceptional size.
There are hatches, and they generally come off like clockwork every day at the same time, and you can find trout eating every stage of that particular bug if you know when and where to look.
I don't know many people who've spent more time than myself chasing trout on the Yough. Is it a hard river to learn? Definitely. I learn new things about it constantly. And fishing being what it is, there are going to be tough days. But I personally haven't fished any other Pennsylvania trout water that is more productive in terms of quality fish on a day in, day out basis than the Yough.
That's all.
