“
Rick
lust Hill il
ration
Nobody else’s dad would or bring brook trout back
New study adds to brook trout’s colorful history in Parched Corn Creek By Kevin Kelly
12 Kentucky Afield Winter 2015
A
VID TROUT ANGLERS know and appreciate Parched Corn Creek in Wolfe County as being one of the few streams in Kentucky that has supported a natural population of brook trout. The narrow mountain rivulet – said to have taken its name from camps along the banks where explorers once parched their corn – flows through breathtaking scenery in a crease of the Red River Gorge that feels more remote and inaccessible than it really is. Bill Holmes, a sign painter from Louisville, visited the boulder-strewn creek many times for his clandestine forays to create a brook trout stream. “He loved those fish,” LaGrange resident Denette Holmes said of her late father. Brook trout, and their presence in Parched Corn Creek, baffled fisheries biologists. Kentucky is just outside the species’ native range. So why were they in this stream? Few knew Holmes was the man behind the mystery. “It’s such an oddball story,” said Tom Timmermann, Northeast Fisheries District biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “It’s remarkable.” The stocking of non-native fish into public waters – or moving fish from one water body into another without a transportation permit – is risky and illegal. Whirling disease, for example, can cause deformities in trout, and moving infected trout from one stream to another can spread the disease. Parched Corn Creek was lucky. Holmes’ unauthorized stockings of brook trout did not cause problems in the creek. By all accounts, a healthy and naturally producing population of brook trout thrived there for years after he smuggled an untold number of fish from Pennsylvania and stocked them into Parched Corn Creek in the 1960s. fw.ky.gov
“
go caving or mountain climbing or kayaking - Denette Holmes 500 miles to Kentucky.
Denette Holmes Photos courtesy
Top: A young Bill Holmes with a stringer of trout. Middle: Bill’s do-it-yourself attitude led him to become a self-taught sign painter. Bottom: Bill and his daughter, Denette, enjoying the outdoors.
fw.ky.gov
HOME AWAY FROM HOME Brook trout are held in high regard in Pennsylvania – it’s the official state fish – and trout streams are plentiful around Oil City, Pennsylvania, about a 90-mile drive northeast of Pittsburgh and not far from the Allegheny National Forest. Robert William “Bill” Holmes was born in 1940 and graduated from Oil City High School. He enjoyed fishing for brook trout with flies that he tied and carried in a small case. In the early 1960s, his family moved to Louisville, where his father worked as a cooper making bourbon barrels. Bill Holmes became a self-taught sign painter who did all of his work by hand. He enjoyed reading encyclopedias and technical books in his spare time, but he also remained an avid outdoorsman. “Interesting character,” Denette Holmes affectionately remembers her father, who died in 2010. “I didn’t realize he was different from anybody else’s dad. Well, I guess I did. Nobody else’s dad would go caving or mountain climbing or kayaking or bring brook trout back 500 miles to Kentucky. Holy mackerel. What a process.” Her father built a ramshackle cabin out of old plywood election signs near the confluence of two creeks outside the community of President in Venango County, Pennsylvania. They would visit it a couple of times each year. “When we went back home, we would bring trout with us,” Denette Holmes said. She was no more than 10 years old at the time, but remembers her father dropping her off on the side of remote roads adjacent to narrow streams. She carried a fishing pole, which she still owns, extra hooks,
a cup of worms and empty milk jugs. Her father would return to pick her up at dark. “I would fish upstream and walk really quietly to keep from scaring them,” she said. “We wanted the small ones and when they would grab it I would flip them up on shore and then go grab them. I never really would hook them. They would bite and I would just fling ‘em out of the creek.” The fish were placed into the milk jugs. When it started to get dark, she made her way back to the pick-up spot, and together she and her father would drive back to the cabin. Once there, the trout went into a fish cage and back into in the stream, where they remained until it was time to drive back to Kentucky. Holmes jury-rigged a system in the back of his Plymouth station wagon – a car he’d painted white with a rollerbrush – to keep the brookies alive on their journey to Kentucky. The aeration system consisted of coolers filled with creek water and a system of air pumps powered by 9-volt batteries. A serenade of humming air pumps accompanied them on their return trips to Kentucky. Holmes would drive straight to the Red River Gorge, or stop first in Louisville if his daughter had school the next day. Chunks of frozen creek water dropped into the coolers kept the water sufficiently cool during the trip. “He would be so worried about those batteries giving out,” Denette Holmes said. “If the fish looked like they weren’t doing well, he’d be pulling over to the side of the road trying to figure it out. We had floating thermometers in there making sure it was cold enough.” What motivated him to go to such great lengths? Holmes simply desired to see if there was a stream in Kentucky clean and cold enough to support brook trout. “He liked Kentucky,” she said, “but it never replaced his trout streams and the purity of the Allegheny Mountains.” SECRET REVEALED Austin Rice, a conservation officer who has since retired, saw the setup first-hand. As Rice remembers, Bill Holmes folWinter 2015 Kentucky Afield 13
“
“
I know that was one of the biggest thrills of dad’s life was knowing that the brook trout had not only survived but thrived. lowed him out the door of a lunch spot in Pine Ridge one day in the late 1960s. He introduced himself and then made a startling admission. “I know what I’m doing is probably illegal, and I don’t know what I might be getting myself into, but I’ve got something I want to show you,” Holmes said. Holmes lifted the backseat out of his car to reveal a container full of trout. “They were brook trout, he tells me,” according to Rice. “He said, ‘I keep the water agitated and I regulate the temperature.’ He said those fish were just as healthy as can be.” And they were going into Parched Corn Creek. As Holmes explained, he had been putting the brook trout in the creek and the fish had taken to their new home. “I didn’t write him up,” Rice recalled. “I let him slide. He was an intelligent-type person and out to do good it looked like… I let him go and do his thing.” Rice didn’t tell anybody about the incident at the time. Some time later, he was in the area where Swift Camp Creek enters the Red River – approximately 1½ miles upstream of the Parched Corn Creek confluence – and saw a fisheries biologist. “Nice fella,” Rice said. “I looked over and said, ‘What’s that you’ve got on your stringer? What’s that big red one?’ He said, ‘Well, actually, that is a brook trout and I don’t know where it came from.’ I
said, ‘You don’t?’” He soon would. Rice relayed the story of meeting Holmes. “He scolded me a little bit,” Rice said. “I felt a little (perturbed) when he left. I still couldn’t see anything bad about it. But, anyway, he told his people and then they went over to Parched Corn and started shocking it. They continued to shock that creek for these brook trout to see how they were doing. So it seemed like they were doing well.” Holmes stopped stocking the creek after meeting the game warden, his daughter said, but he often visited it to check on the fish. He never fished for them. “I know that was one of the biggest thrills of Dad’s life was knowing that the brook trout had not only survived but thrived,” Denette Holmes said. DEPARTMENT STEPPING IN Reports from recent years suggest brook trout either no longer exist in Parched Corn Creek or their numbers are so low that they’re virtually undetectable. Jim Axon, a retired assistant fisheries director with Kentucky Fish and Wildlife, harbors a keen interest in the creek’s brook trout. Not only did he study them, even plodding through the dense rhododendron and abundant Eastern hemlock with then assistant Northeast Fisheries District biologist Al Surmont to film spawning activity in the creek in 1993, but he also has fished for them. Days of catching six to 10 brook trout up to 11 inches long were not uncommon in the 1980s and 1990s, Axon said. He has a theory about what’s happened to the creek’s brook trout: extreme weather over the past 10 to 15 years hurt in-stream habitat and affected the survival and reproduction of the fish. “The assumption on our behalf is these fish are basically all but gone. So what can we do about it?” Timmermann said. “Jim Axon contacted us with a very good proposal and a project in mind.” Kentucky Fish and Wildlife is conducting three years of test stockings to determine if the creek can still support these
highly prized fish. In October, department staff and volunteers backpacked 300 Owhi-strain fingerling brook trout raised at Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery down Rough Trail and released them into the clear, chilly water. “We’ll come back and re-evaluate the stream, probably do some electrofishing and seining to see what the numbers look like,” Timmermann said. “If we can age them, we will. But the big point of that at that time will be if all the year classes that we’re stocking in there are surviving. If they are, it indicates the stream can remain cool enough to hold a perpetuating population of fish there.” Brook trout prefer small headwater streams with cool water flowing over rocky substrate. Attempts to establish the species in Kentucky span decades. Federal records show brook trout were stocked in Kentucky as early as the late 1800s. In 1968, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stocked brook trout in two streams in Bell and Harlan counties. Holmes studied Parched Corn Creek and Shillalah Creek in Bell County as potential locations for his own brook trout stocking, according to his daughter. In 1980 and 1981, Kentucky Fish and Wildlife introduced fingerling brook trout into Bad Branch in Letcher County, and the positive results there led the department to develop natural populations in other suitable streams.
fw.ky.gov
Kentucky Fish and Wildlife only considers managing a stream for brook trout if it satisfies a set of requirements. For example, it must offer at least one mile of suitable cold water habitat, be on public land that is mountainous and heavily wooded, and be at least half a mile removed from the nearest road access. It also must be at least 2,000 feet above sea level or have a natural fish barrier such as a waterfall. Shillalah Creek and Parched Corn Creek are among those streams in Kentucky
classified as exceptional trout streams with an existing brook trout fishery or the potential for one. Questions about the Gorge stream remain, however. During one abnormally hot summer month years ago, a sensor placed in Parched Corn Creek recorded a mean water temperature of 68 degrees, Timmermann said. That is just on the threshold of what brook trout can withstand. Biologists expect the ongoing study to provide some answers about whether brook trout can survive in the Wolfe County stream.
Bringing Back Brook Trout Top to bottom: Fisheries Biologist Tom Timmermann holds a bag of fingerling brook trout raised at Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery. Biologists and volunteers next place bagged fish in backpacks and hike them over steep and rugged terrain to the valley floor of the Red River Gorge. Once at Parched Corn Creek, trout are distributed throughout pools up and down the creek.
Kevin Kelly photos
fw.ky.gov
“If this stocking of brook trout is carried out and successful in re-establishing a brook trout fishery in Parched Corn Creek, it would once again provide a unique trout fishing experience,” Axon wrote in his proposal. ENVISIONING RENEWED OPPORTUNITY The natural splendor of Red River Gorge attracts thousands of visitors each year, and the Parched Corn Creek section of Rough Trail is one of the gems found within the national geological area and recreational hotspot. The trail leads hikers down steps carved into rock, zigzags around a chimney rock formation that towers over sprawling rhododendron, passes rock shelters formed over millennia and beneath mature trees whose lofty canopies distill the sun’s rays into the dappled light that falls upon the forest floor. It opens up at the bottom of the valley. There, Parched Corn Creek meanders cool and clear through a scenic glen. It’s pristine. There are at least 20 good pockets of fishable water upstream of a foot bridge and a dozen or so below it, Axon said. For a trout angler up for the challenge of trying to catch a brook trout, it’s a heavenly spot, but anglers fishing there must use only artificial flies and lures with a single hook. Any brook trout caught must be released. “When you catch one of those, it’s not the easiest thing in the world, and you’ve essentially created the perfect combination of lure and presentation to make it happen,” said Jeff Ross, assistant director of fisheries with Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. “It’s a prize to get one.” The average length of the brook trout stocked in October was roughly 3 to 4 inches. “The ultimate point with our trout fishery is they’re there for people to catch,” Timmermann said. “So, certainly, if anglers want to go down there and experience all that Parched Corn has to offer at this point, even though we’re at the very infant stages of this project, I wouldn’t discourage them at all.” As for his expectations, Timmermann hopes the fish can survive for long periods of time. To document natural reproduction would be exciting. Denette Holmes is hoping for the same, just as her father surely would. n Winter 2015 Kentucky Afield 15