Slideshow Tour of Caledonia Springs
In early February I spent a few hours on the Creek. Here are a few pictures.

To serve as a central resource for the preservation and improvement of the Caledonia New York Spring Creek

Purpose: To serve as a clearing house for information on Caledonia's Spring Creek in Upstate New York. To post documents and links to other web sites relevant to the resource.    

 9" wild brown trout from the 900'

      My Personal Goals for the Creek:

• To establish a fishable population of wild brook trout in Spring Creek
• To do stream improvement projects that make sense for this meadow stream that will help increase the health of the fish population
• To establish much more public access to the stream

    I have fished Spring Creek in Caledonia since about 1965.  Since 1995 I have been a student of the stream finding myself as much interested in its' ecology, natural and unnatural history, and beauty as much as the in fish it contains. Also most  fisherman who regularly fish this stream are very interesting themselves and are worthy of mention.

      Due to the recent dramatic reduction of the fish population after the bitter winters of  2014 and 2015 there has been an awakening of public interest in this unique resource.  It appears as if the stream will recover its wild brown trout population on its own with the return of mild Winters.  I am encouraged that there are very few voices that want the state to stock the stream with brown trout from the Caledonia Hatchery. I would like to show appreciation for the fisheries biologists in Region 8 DEC who will fight to maintain this as a wild trout fishery. In the past 20 years more and more fisherman have come to recognize the value of wild trout populations.

      For the past 15 years I have noticed a dramatic decrease in the Brook Trout population in the stream. I've heard some fisherman say they really have no problem with this loss, the browns are bigger anyways.  I have heard from some biologist in the State that brook trout can't compete with the brown.  Browns were first brought to this stream to the hatchery by  Seth Green in 1883. There was a decent fishable wild brook trout population as late as 2005.  It seems to me that the competition from Brown Trout is not the cause of the recent loss.

        Seth Green established the fish hatchery on and in the stream in 1864 to raise brook trout for sale.  Since 1864 the state has not found a natural spring source that even comes close to producing a similar volume of 50 degree Spring water year round essential for a trout hatchery.               The stream is only a mile long before it enters the Oatka Crreek and in Summer Months supplies half of the total flow of the Oatka. Spring Creek is only a mile long, the Oatka 58 miles long. Spring Creek is a full blown medium size Creek within 200 yards or so of its Spring sources. The average flow of the creek is about 10,000 gallons a minute. The water chemistry is interesting and is very mineral rich. The invertebrate population is very large. The brown trout that grow up in this environment are as beautiful as I've ever seen probably due to the water chemistry. Even the fish that grow up in the hatchery have much more color than brown trout from other hatcheries.
        A low gradient stream with a marl and silt bottom. Emerging and flowing through swampland,    similar to the headwaters of some Adirondack streams I have seen but with a much greater flow I've seen a few streams at their headwaters flow through wetland springs but none have this volume.  In my view there should be no reason why a significant population of brookies can not be restored.   


MUCH MORE TO COME;  ALL OF THE ABOVE SUBJECT TO REVISION