Pennsylvania’s brook trout trail will have college students fishing and doing research simultaneously.
Photo: Pixabay
Nobody said summer school is supposed to be fun.
But nobody said it couldn’t be, either.
Six college students are going to find that out starting in May when they spend nearly a month fly fishing and camping their way through the heart of Pennsylvania’s brook trout country.
It’s all part of the “brook trout trail” program.
Last summer, Trout Unlimited, or TU, launched a project called “A Native Odyssey.” Five college students attempted to catch all 16 trout species native to North America, all from waters on public land. They talked to people – from ranchers to anglers to Trout Unlimited volunteers to foresters — along the way.
The goal was to not only document the fishing, but also the state of trout country in the 21st century.
“They hope to reveal a diverse set of perspectives on what public lands, native species, and clean water means to each region the students visit,” Trout Unlimited said at the time.
The program succeeded.
So well, in fact, that state Trout Unlimited councils were challenged to do something similar within their own borders.
Thus, Pennsylvania’s brook trout trail was born.
Starting from Keystone College, students will explore the Delaware River watershed, fishing and exploring headwater streams, said Charlie Charlesworth, president of the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited and a member of the national group’s youth committee. They’ll follow Route 6 west to Mansfield University. There, they’ll have a night to shower, eat and sleep in a bed. Then they’ll begin a week in the Susquehanna River watershed. Finally, they’ll spend one night at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford before working through the Ohio River watershed.
“Route 6 just happens to be the hot bed for small-town colleges, as well as the mainstem of brook trout in Pennsylvania,” Charlesworth said.
The students will have work to do everywhere they go.
Researchers from the three universities, with biologists from Trout Unlimited and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, will have them sampling water quality, measuring riparian buffers, and more.
“One of the things we want them to focus on is to see if there’s any difference in the genetic makeup, the DNA, of the brook trout within the three different watersheds,” Charlesworth said.
They’ll also be doing some reconnaissance.
For several years now, Fish and Boat Commission crews, together with partners from other entities, have been looking for wild trout in previously unassessed waters.
That’s turned up a lot of fish in a lot of places, some of them unexpected.
Sometimes, though, deciding which waters to sample can be tough, said Kris Kuhn, chief of the commission’s fisheries management division.
“We can look on a map and look at the nearby watersheds and land use and try to identify where we might find wild trout and where they might be at risk,” Kuhn said.
“But until you get out into the field you don’t know what you’re going to find. Some stream might look good on paper and then you get there and it’s dry.”
So, the students will take a first look at some potential wild trout waters in their journey, he added.
They’ll do a lot of all that work by actually fishing, seeing what they might catch, and in what numbers, while clipping fins on a few for DNA work.
“We’re hoping that 50 percent of their time can be spent fishing,” Charlesworth said.
All of the students will get internship credits, as well as be able to use what they learned for graduation projects.
The hope is to get at least two women on the crew. Five will be fisheries biology majors or something similar.
The fifth, though, Charlesworth said, will be a communications major who also fishes.
“Because we’d like to create a documentary on this whole project,” he said. “We’d also like to do some livestreaming while they’re on the road and in the field.”
The logistics of the project are still being worked out. Students, for example, can’t apply until April 15, though program organizers have been communicating with schools already.
There’s also the issue of how to pay the program’s $8,000 cost. Charlesworth said the state council has raised more than half, but is still seeking donations.
It is going to come together, though, he said. And if all goes as planned, it will be recreated next year, using Route 30 as the link to watersheds across the southern half of the state.
“It’s an ambitious program,” Charlesworth said. “But we think it can have some real value, for the students and for us.”
Supporting TU and the brook trout trail
Students for the brook trout trail program can come from any of the college or universities with an established or pending “5 Rivers Chapter” of Trout Unlimited.
There are established student-run chapters at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, Juniata College, Penn State University, Keystone College and Bloomsburg University. A number of other schools have chapters in the works.
Students interested in starting one at their school can contact Judi Sittler at 814-861-3277 or jlsittler@comcast.net.
Meanwhile, donations are being taken from anyone interested in supporting the brook trout trail financially. For details, contact Charlie Charlesworth at 570-954-5042 or ffnepa@epix.net.
