Fall Creek Natural Trout Population
Jesse McConnell, McLean, 2006. High School level, 1st place
Fall Creek can be an angler's dream in the early spring, when
the water is cool and the stream fresh and clear,and when the Brook
Trout are active and vigorous. But, as more sunlight warms the ground
and summer approaches, the Creek experiences a major change. The
native Brook Trout population is out-competed by the stocked Brown
Trout, who can survive the increasingly warmer water in Fall Creek.
Water quality is also suffering, causing the delicate species of
insects the trout rely on in the spring, Stoneflies, to become increasingly
stressed. All these factors contribute to the noticeable decline
in the population of Brook Trout in Fall Creek.
Every year the New York Department of Environmental Conservation
stocks Fall Creek with approximately 5000 Brown Trout. The Brown
Trout is a very tolerant fish, it can survive in much warmer water
than any of the local species, and it can tolerate fairly poor water
quality. But the Brown Trout is not native even to America, they
were imported from Germany in 1880 by Fred Mather, a fish culturist,
for sporting reasons. At first many fishermen despised the imported
trout, but soon accepted it for its size and energy. Brown Trout,
as they are suited much better for Fall Creek and the surrounding
streams, have been competing with the native Brook Trout that originally
populated Fall Creek. The population of Brook Trout has become virtually
nonexistent in Fall Creek due to the failing water quality, and
the lack of habitat. For the species requires cold, and clean water
to survive.
Brook Trout used to be abundant in Fall Creek, but many of the tributaries
on which the Brook Trout rely for the cold spring water have been
blocked by culverts, or warmed by the increasing amount of farmland
around the Fall Creek valley. The Brook Trout is a relatively small
trout, typically 5-7” in length, that thrives as an opportunistic
feeder around riffles, fast moving water, before a pool, deeper
area of slow moving water, or on the sides of riffles, where they
can easily grab food as it floats by. Riffles usually only exist
closer to the head waters of a stream where the stream bed is narrower
and the gradient steeper. This restricted environment causes the
populations to be very limited in warmer streams where their ideal
habitat is scarce.
Brook and Brown Trout can live together if both populations are
strong and stream quality high. The Brook Trout adopts the niche
of an underwater feeder, grabbing nymphs and minnows as the current
carries food by, while the Brown Trout dominates the surface feeding,
taking flies directly off the waters surface. The two species can
even interbreed, though it is rare, the result is called a Tiger
Trout, for the striped appearance inherited from the Brook Trout.
Tiger Trout are sterile, so no successive generations result.
Fall Creek was once a clean stream, ideal for Brook Trout due to
its many tributaries and spring-fed headwaters, but the development
of Fall Creek has led to the construction of fields that warm the
water in the summer, and leech nitrates into the streams, which
stresses the Brook Trout population while encouraging the invasive
Brown Trout, further forcing the Brook Trout to give up its habitat.
The construction of fields has also caused the stream to straighten,
which causes the pools that harbor the trout to disappear. The amount
of stress and habitat loss has already taken its toll on the Brook
Trout, and has turned Fall Creek into a marginal trout stream.
If an effort were made to improve Fall Creek, building major pools,
making tributaries accessible to trout, and reducing the amount
of invasive Brown Trout stocked every year, the native Brook Trout
would very likely rebound and make Fall Creek a heritage to original
trout streams that made the fly fishing legacy. It would be a shame
to let the beautiful Brook Trout become extinct in the Cayuga Watershed
due to a lack of effort to protect the native species.
|
