So Pennsylvania doesn’t have a new state record rainbow trout after all.
But it does have gill lice.
The would-be state record was a 17-pound, 7-ounce, 31-inch trout caught from Holman Lake in Little Buffalo State Park in Perry County. Lance Umholtz of Newport caught it, had it weighed on a certified scale and then submitted a record application to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.
That was on June 26.
To be eligible as a new state record, a fish must top the old one by at least 2 ounces.
That was the case here.
The existing rainbow record is a trout that weighed 15 pounds, 6.25 ounces. It was caught from Jordan Creek in Lehigh County in 1986 by Dennis Clouse of Bethlehem.
Still, the state record application was rejected this week.
“There’s an internal committee that reviews applications, and they don’t accept them as records if there’s any kind of concern,” said commission press secretary Rick Levis.
There were apparently two.
“First, he didn’t have a witness to the catch, which is something we look for,” Levis said. “We like to have a witness.”
The other has to do with where the fish came from.
Holman Lake is relatively small at just 88 acres. It’s primarily a warmwater fishery, Levis said.
It’s also apparently shallow, at least in spots. The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is drawing it down this winter to do dam repairs but also some dredging.
The commission does stock it with trout, but doesn’t believe it released a record. Agency staff decided it was unlikely one could grow to that size there on its own either.
“Our biologists didn’t think it was capable of producing a fish of that size,” Levis said.
So Clouse’s record stands, at 31 years and counting.
Gill lice
As for those gill lice, they turned up in several places this summer. In spring, they were found in Lebanon and Dauphin counties.
Gill lice are readily visible on the gills of infected fish.
Photo courtesy Missouri Department of Cosnervation
More recently, biologists looking for the parasite found them in Linn Run in Westmoreland County and Shafer Run in Somerset County. All were found on stocked brook trout, said Rick Lorson, the Somerset-based area 8 fisheries manager for the commission.
“We’re hoping the gill lice infestation does not prove a detriment for the wild trout in those waters,” he said.
Gill lice made their first appearance in Pennsylvania last summer, in Wolfe Run in Centre County. A subsequent investigation found evidence of them in nine other waters, too.
All of those waters were stocked by the same cooperative nursery. The commission euthanized the remainder of its fish and replaced them with rainbow trout, which are believed more resistant to the bugs.
The trout with lice in Shafer Run came from a commercial hatchery, Lorson said. It’s unknown where the Linn Run fish originated. It’s possible, though, they came from a similar facility nearby, he added.
What the discovery of lice means is unclear.
“It’s a parasite. It can get to a level where it hurts an individual fish,” Lorson said. “What we really don’t know yet is how bad it would have to get to harm a population.”
Anglers may find out.
Jason Detar, chief of the commission’s division of fisheries management, said last fall that while the lice pose no threat to humans, they are hard to eradicate once in a water system.
