For the first time in at least decades, wild trout are living in Roaring Run, a rollicking, cold water tributary of the Kiski River, once known for its abundance of wildflowers more than a century ago.

The Conemaugh Valley Conservancy found seven fish less than a year old and one small adult during a survey earlier this month in the Kiski Township stream, along the Roaring Run trail’s secondary trail known as Rock Furnace.

The survey on Aug. 14 also turned up stonecat catfish — small catfish that live within riffles of fast moving water.

“It was a significant finding for both fish because they are indicators of good water quality, and that is what we work for,” said Chris Garbark, program director of the Conemaugh Valley Conservancy, who conducted the survey.

Roaring Run was polluted at some point as the stream fed small mills more than a century ago, including a charcoal-fired iron furnace in the 1800s.

“This is fantastic news,” said Ken Kaminski, president of the Roaring Run Watershed Association, which owns and maintains the Roaring Run and Rock Furnace trails and environs.

“The volunteers have worked hard to clean the water here and it goes to show what can be done,” he said. Roaring Run meanders through watershed association and private property, he noted.

Rare find in Armstrong

The Roaring Run trout might very well be the only known wild population of trout living in Armstrong County, said Sgt. Mike Walsh of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission in Somerset.

“Down in this corner of the state, it is fairly unusual to have native trout due to the fact that most of the streams have silt and are very warm,” he said. “It is in the most clear, pristine and mountain-type streams that have a reproducing population of trout.”

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission will conduct follow-up surveys, he said.

It could take one or several years to document if enough trout at varying ages are present to classify Roaring Run as a Class A trout stream, Fish and Boat’s top classification for water quality for fishing.

There are Class A trout streams in the Laurel Highlands, with the majority of the state’s trout streams located in the center of the commonwealth in mountainous areas, Walsh said.

Not so coincidentally, Roaring Run is a “fast-flowing stream with unique flora that one would see in the Laurel Highlands,” Garbark said. The water runs through a deep ravine and it is usually cold, he said.

The brown trout likely came from the population of trout that have been stocked in the Kiski River for years, he said. It is possible they fish migrated from a different area, he said.

The fish might have come from Apollo-Ridge’s Mike Saxion’s science and social studies classes, who raised and released fingerling trout into Roaring Run for multiple years.

The Conemaugh Valley Conservancy regularly samples the Kiski and other waterways in the Conemaugh watershed to monitor water quality.

The Kiski-Conemaugh watershed is 1,888 square-miles and includes 130 municipalities in the southern portions of Armstrong, Cambria, and Indiana counties and the northern half of Somerset and Westmoreland counties.

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