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Fishing the pits
A few are little more than summer mud holes. Others resemble farm ponds. Some swallow 100 or more acres. Many are stunningly deep, clear and, in a few spots, surprisingly cold. Nearly all are fishable. "A couple of the lakes have trout in them," said Rob Rold, assistant fisheries biologist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife's southeastern district. "They're deep enough and cold enough to support them." My fishing partner John Durbin and I weren't looking for trout. And even if we had it would practically have taken downriggers to reach them, and we were armed with a couple of handcrafted bamboo fly rods from Durbin's workshop -- tools not really designed for deep-water probing. If the fish weren't near the top of the water column, they would remain safe from us.
Fishing: Creek cleanup will not happen overnight
Fifty years ago, Green Drakes disappeared from Spring Creek in Centre County after someone from a Penn State University chemistry lab dumped cyanide into the water. The big mayflies haven't been seen there since. "A bunch of us tried to reintroduce them by planting nymphs in the stream and duns in the foliage," said Dan Shields, of Lamont, Pa., who wrote about the incident in his book "Fly Fishing Pennsylvania's Spring Creek." "We even netted thousands of spinners from another stream, but they never took hold. We tried for three or four years, but it was no use." Although the recent train derailment and chemical spill on Sinnemahoning Portage Creek in Mc-Kean and Cameron counties was much bigger and more deadly, experts are cautiously optimistic that insects will rebound on what had been pristine, wild trout water, but predict a long, slow process.
Feds say trout hatchery in New Marlborough can stay open
NEW MARLBOROUGH, Mass. The Berkshire Trout Hatchery in New Marlborough will remain open for the foreseeable future. The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with representatives from the Berkshire Trout Hatchery Foundation. The hatchery is the only federal one in Western Massachusetts, and the only volunteer-run hatchery in the country. The facility includes 148 acres covered by marked trails, and it raises rainbow and brown trout for release into local waters. The hatchery includes a gravity-fed springwater system of pools to breed and hatch the fish. The hatchery also is raising 20-thousand Atlantic Salmon for use in the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Restoration program. That program is trying to reintroduce Atlantic salmon into the Connecticut River Valley.
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