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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.
Native brook trout are in hot water
My first brook trout arrived on a frosty late-spring morning in mountain water so cold it made my fingers tingle before going completely numb. No bigger than my hand, the brookie was a work of art to rival New Hampshire's Chocorua Lake, its home just before I enticed it to swallow my fly and to which I would return it moments later. Its olive skin peppered with blue-ringed red dots and a rakish orange belly is a vivid image that has stayed with me for more than 25 years. If I had a lick of artistic ability, I could draw that fish from memory. Since arriving here 18 years ago, my encounters with brookies have been fewer and farther between. Some of that has to do with the other fish that occupy my time: white perch, croaker and, of course, striped bass. (Let's not even mention menhaden, OK?) But even when I've carved out the time, it's been hard to do a meet-and-greet with Maryland's only native trout.
Spill probe as beauty spot lake reopens
THE CHASE beauty spot where thousands of rare fish died after a sewage leak has been reopened as investigators continue inquiries into the cause and long-term effects of the spill. The spill - in the form of a grey fungus -covered large areas of water in the 250-acre National Trust-owned beauty spot at Woolton Hill, near Newbury last month. A walker reported the spill after seeing dead fish including brown trout and endangered bullhead and lamprey floating on the surface. The Environment Agency estimated more than 2,000 fish had died along with other marine life in the chalk stream and an adjoining lake. An agency spokesman said this week: "The National Trust has reopened the area but is warning people not to swim or let their pets go in the water. .
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