Latest News

8/24/04

Within the last month, the Board of Directors of Kinzua Fish & Wildlife Association has learned of the resignation of our long time president, Lee Teel.  It's a long story, but in a nutshell Lee was too busy with his own projects and couldn't find the time to contribute to the club as much as he had in the past.  Lee has contributed alot over the years, he was one of the founding members of KF&WA, along with present board member Guy Waldman.  These two men, along with others, started an organization that has done so much for Kinzua Country that it would be impossible to even start listing here.

Bob Boyer also needs some mention here as he has been a long time member, contributing much of his time for the betterment of our organization.  Bob is our Lake Project Coordinator, and works with Brent Pence from the ANF and Bob Hoskins from the Corps of Engineers in developing the projects that all of our organizations work so hard to accomplish.

Lee's resignation letter is included in our newsletter that we mailed out to our members in December. If you would like a copy of our 2004 newsletter, drop me an email with your mailing address and we'll get one out to you. If you have MS Publisher, let me know and I'll email you a copy.

Also, the Board of Directors just last summer acquired a much needed addition, and that is the position of secretary.  Judy Rolick of Kane has graciously agreed to join our organization and to bring some organization, to KF&WA.  Judy was voted in by a unanimous vote.  Welcome aboard Judy, we sure are glad you had the determination to join a group comprised of a bunch of guys.  We need the help!

We also held new election's for the positions of president and vice-president. The list of current board members can be viewed here.

Fish Pictures

We now have a new page on our website that will be used for posting pictures of fish caught in Kinzua. You can view it here, along with information on how to have YOUR pictures posted on our site.

Overall results of the 2003 Gill Net Survey Results- Kinzua

Please be patient. This page takes almost a minute to load with a 56K modem.

This information comes to us by way of Robert Hoskin, Fisheries Biologist with the United States Army Corps Of Engineers.

Some of the excerpts from Bob's report follow;

"As part of the cooperative annual gill net surveys at Allegheny Reservoir, effort this year was a total of 855 hours. The program was standardized in 1991, 35 gill nets set in the same location in the time period between the opening days of trout and walleye seasons. Previous annual reports should be used as reference".
"For the first time, a single 8" white perch was collected in the reservoir. Somehow they seem to be expanding their range in northwestern PA and southwestern NY. Last year we collected them for the first time at Woodcock Creek Lake and Union City Reservoir tailraces. Several lakes just over the border in NY however still in the Ohio River drainage have well established populations".
"The PFBC fingerling channel catfish stocking program finally appears to be paying off. We collected two this year, 9 & 12".
"Once again we collected a nice largemouth bass (15"), that makes four of the last five years in the collection and none previously".
"Allegheny National Fish Hatchery culled their brood lake trout this spring. A total of 130 were stocked. We collected and released five in our nets, all were large in the 15-18 pound range".
"We collected a beautiful 17" rainbow trout near the NY line. This was definitely not a recently stocked fish, all the others I remember catching in recent years have definitely had the appearance of a stocked trout".

"The walleye catch rate rose slightly in 2003 to 19.77 walleye per 100 hours of gill netting. This rate is still below the 13 year average of 30.86. The 13 year high was 53.30 in 1997 and the low was 15.64 in 1994. The largest walleye collected was just over 25" and weighed 5.5 lbs.  Only three walleye over 20" were collected. Of the 169 walleye collected , 60.9% were less than 15" which is good news for the future. In contrast, during the late 90's, 60-70% of the walleyes collected were over 15".
"Northern pike catch rate for 2003 was down slightly. However, we collected 7 over 30" and 14 less than 16". This means great fishing now and good fishing in the future".

"Panfish combined percent composition and catch rate numbers were down in 2003 primarily because we only collected one white bass this year. The catch rate for perch dropped from a 13 year high in 2002 of 10.69 to 7.84. The size of yellow perch was better this year however as evidenced by the increase in the PSD and RSD values. Though numbers of white crappie were comparable to 2002, the size increased. Once again the white crappie PSD, RSD-P and RSD-M values continued to rise since 2000".
"We collected four musky this year, 40, 42, 42, & 48 inches". We also collected six resident brown trout which ranged from 14 to 26 inches and four stocked brown trout from 8-12. Sixteen stocked brook trout (9-16") and four stocked rainbow trout (10-16") were also collected".

"We stocked the 3-million walleye fry by boat on April 23".

The first chart is a breakdown by year, the second chart shows the results of this years Gill Net Study.

Many thanks to the workers who completed this study. As anybody familiar with this area knows, April is not the month you want to be spending a full week in a boat, pulling in nets and counting fish.