Pennsylvania has a great interactive map showing the state’s fishable waters, with stocking info, directions and more. You can filter for Class A wild trout streams, stockable rivers, the whole bit. It also shows what percentage of each stream has public and private access. Very, very cool and useful. Will come in handy this spring and summer when I travel up there.
Whoah, Nellie. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been busy this week.
The debate about the safety of hydraulic fracturing of rock deep in the Marcellus formation to recover natural gas rages on. WTAE in Pittsburgh has a story showing air emissions from a Marcellus shale gas plant in Pennsylvania, and there seems to again be controversy over what exactly is going on with these drilling operations.
I think most people would love to see Marcellus gas production if done safely. That is the whole question with hydrofracking — how safe is it? There are numerous reports of ground water contamination, improper disposal of fracking fluids into river systems, the use of highly toxic chemicals, the exemption from publicly reporting of what chemicals are used and fish kills due to Marcellus gas drilling operations. From the WTAE story, which is about just the air pollution from gas operations:
Pam and Kristen Judy say they’ve been getting headaches, sore throats and nose bleeds ever since this compressor station was built next door. DEP air monitoring in the Judy’s yard last year found evidence of methane, benzene, toluene, acetone and 12 other compounds.
John Hanger, DEP: “The total numbers, once we get to 40,000 wells in this state, of air emissions, unless the industry uses the cleanest technology, will be a problem.”
Ray Walker, Marcellus Shale Coalition: “We’re literally going to be able to move gas or compress gas or treat gas with literally tenths of a percent of the emissions that we used to.” Some of those technologies already exist but aren’t always used. In fact, they aren’t required to be used. Like vapor recovery units that can be placed on tank stacks to prevent the kind of pollution plume you’re seeing here. That’s why the group GASP wants DEP to require the use of cleaner technologies.
The concerns over groundwater pollution are much greater.
Pennsylvania, with over 5000 miles of water containing brook trout, stands to lose a lot if drillers are not responsible or if it is not possible to drill for gas safely, both of which seem to be in question. Brook trout depend on clean groundwater. Humans, not coincidentally, depend on groundwater, too. Groundwater flows deep within the earth’s crust and provides fresh water in our springs, streams, rivers, lakes, wells and irrigation systems. We don’t have maps showing where this water travels deep underground. Injecting millions of gallons of fracking fluids into a gas well is not guaranteed to be contained within the well area, and gas drilling chemicals are often not contained (this link is to a bunch of lawyers with an interest in exposing this, but the site links to actual articles on reputable news sites). And once contaminated, cleaning up a water source thousands of feet underground is not possible, and where that water flows next is not always understood.
It all just begs for caution. And these drilling companies (though I think many share these concerns to a degree) are primarily in the business of extracting gas. If they were primarily in the business of protecting groundwater, then they would be preventing the injection of toxic chemicals thousands of feet underground, and they would not be lobbying state governments and municipalities to accept their contaminated fracking water and allow its disposal directly into rivers.
Orvis News has a good video showing how to tie a quick clinch knot for a dropper rig, courtesy of Zach Matthews, from the Itinerant Angler. Good simple way to do this.
How to Tie the Instant Dropper Knot from Zach Matthews on Vimeo.
In Madison County, both the lower Hughes and Rose Rivers have been stocked this week. With a little warmer weather and some uneducated fish, might be worth a trip. You could hit both in a day.
Switchfisher reports that there are three fishing-related flea markets coming up this month: Feb. 5 in Dale City, VA, Feb. 12 in Sterling, VA and Feb. 13 in Fredericksburg, VA. See the link above for details. Switchfisher will be selling copies of his excellent fishing Guidebooks for several local waters at these events.
Yes, things have slowed way down here at the Brook Trout Fishing Guide, the only website that purports to promote fly fishing for brook trout above all else that is interesting, wholesome and good. Is that really true? Quite possibly, no. Nevertheless, the lord of this website, yours truly, has been slammed with a lot of work that pays the bills as well as a lot of work that does not. The latter would include shoveling wet snow literally for days last week, keeping the house warm by keeping the generator running after we lost power, and generally just trying to pull out of the funk that is the dead of a cold, gray winter. But this will all soon change.
In the pipe are some new reviews, including a couple fly rods, a fishing pack/vest and some new hippers I just received. I’m also going to cover where to go, what to wear and how to fool those little fish in our little backwoods streams. And fly tying. I’ve got fur, feathers and dubbing coming out the wazoo now, and have made some of it into mostly bad looking flies, but some not too bad at all. And I need to give you beautiful photos. Lots of ’em.
So bear with me as I retool for the coming season. I see the groundhog did not see his shadow today, so winter should hopefully be dying a quick death around here, the waters warming up and the crocus and daffodils getting ready to sprout. Can’t wait.
Wild Trout Streams is a site that provides maps and geographical data (primarily KML files that you can download and use in Google Earth) showing wild trout streams throughout the east coast. This looks like a great resource.
I’ve been checking out the site for wild trout streams in Virginia, which has a lot of information including PDF and JPG format species maps, topo maps and data sets for a ton of places in the state. Shenandoah National Park is covered here, as well as stream flows and other data for the entire state.
This is definitely a good starting point if you’re keen on exploring streams off the beaten path. The main map on the Virginia page (shown in this post) shows bright green lines for known brook trout populations, courtesy of data from the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, which you can also see using the EBTJV interactive map or on the Geospatial Data Search and Access page of the EBTJV website.
In addition to the green lines for brook trout streams, the map shows brownish lines for brown trout and pink lines for rainbows. There are separate KML files for brook, brown and rainbow trout streams in Virginia. Just looking at the map (click on it to see it larger) it is obvious that brook trout populations are concentrated on the Blue Ridge around Skyline Drive and The Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as on the western side of the Shenandoah Valley, along Great North Mountain and eastern West Virginia.
I see places I’ve always suspected brookies may inhabit and that seems to now merit some trips! Hopefully this data is recent and good enough to still be reasonably accurate. Brook trout fishing is right around the corner and I am going to track down a couple of these spots in addition to hitting the places I already know and love. I can’t wait.
Quick update from Murray’s Fly Shop about fishing for brookies this time of year. The brook trout eggs are still in the beds, so avoid wading if you decide to go fishing on the mountain streams right now. With the temperatures about as cold as they ever get around here, you might not be on your way out there any time soon.
Friends gave me this nifty book for Christmas, “Upriver and Downstream.” It’s a collection of essays published in the New York Times‘ Outdoors column over the years, from well known authors including Nick Lyons, Thomas McGuane, Ernest Schwiebert, Nick Karas and many others. Being the middle of winter, with our local streams iced up pretty well, it’s good substitute entertainment.
The book has several essays that talk about brook trout fishing. One in particular grabbed me last night, “Manhattan as a Paradise for Trout and Fly-Fishing,” by Nicholas Karas. Karas also happens to be the author of the book, “Brook Trout.” The title of his essay from 1998 is more than catchy, in 1998 or in the year 2011, or in any year within the last hundred. What he describes is incredible. You can get the same sense of how things once were throughout eastern North America by reading many old texts about fishing. I’ve highlighted one such old book that talks about brook trout fishing NEAR New York City before. But actually IN New York City?
Apparently Manhattan used to be a “sportsman’s paradise” and a destination for brook trout fishing. Yes. Manhattan. In the 1700’s, Freshwater Pond became a unique spot in what is now the Big City when the City Council restricted fishing there to the use of only “angle-rod, hook and line,” sort of like our modern single hook barbless artificial lure regulations in various pieces of streams. Freshwater Pond was located in the area between what are now Duane and Canal Streets. It was fed by Collect Pond (near Federal Plaza and The Tombs), and drained into the Hudson River. Sea-run brook trout (“salters”) were abundant here, too.
The English, who were avid fly fishers since Izaak Walton published “The Compleat Angler” over a century before they were defeated by the Colonists, popularized the sport on Manhattan. After the Revolutionary War, the area remained a hub for sportfishing for decades. Throughout the island there were streams filled with brook trout.
I just can’t even imagine that right now. Or ever. But then I came across The Alley Pond Environmental Center. For the past ten years they have been reintroducing brook trout into Alley Pond and Alley Creek, near the Long Island Expressway and the Cross Island Parkway (not Manhattan, but still New York, NY proper), with the help of Trout Unlimited.
While Long Island is known for having good brook trout fishing (something I did not know until recently), the idea of brookies in New York City shocks me. That’s just really cool.