Published: July 04, 2009 11:58 pm      

Anglers get boost in trout

Trout fishermen got a mid-summer bonus recently when the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission put more than 3,000 surplus adult trout in two Southwest Region streams.

Jacobs Creek in neaby Westmoreland County got 1,800 of the fish while Somerset County’s Stonycreek River headwaters got 1,500.

According to Tom Qualters, assistant manager of the agency’s Southwest Region, the fish were leftovers from the annual stocking program

“Usually, when the hatcheries get done with the stocking and find they have more fish than they needed, they send them out like this,” he said.

Qualters said the same process resulted in 100,000 brook trout fingerlings being stocked recently in Armstrong County’s Keystone Power Dam.

Qualters said Laurelville, just east of Donegal, was near the center of the stocked area on Jacobs Creek. He said the Stonycreek stocking took place over about 8 miles below Shanksville.

Earlier this year, the fish commission stocked 15,000 yearling lake trout in Cambria County’s Beaverdam Run Reservoir.

The agency also has stocked nearly 3 million young walleye in the Southwest Region since spring, including 14,400 in Indiana County’s Yellow Creek Lake and 10,100 in Somerset County’s Quemahoning Reservoir.

The stockings included 1,500 walleye for Cambria County’s Colver Reservoir and 2,550 for Somerset Lake.