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Sunday, February 16, 2003

By Deborah Weisberg

The 42-inch muskie John Douglas landed on the Monongahela River this past November still makes his heart pound when he remembers how it jumped, how it tail-danced on the water.

	A young angler tosses a line into the clean waters of the Monogahela River at River Front Park on the South Side near the Birhimgham Bridge. (Robert J. Pavuchak, Post-Gazette)

"That river has gotten so good, so clean," said Douglas, 47, of Forward. "I started fishing it when I was knee high to a grasshopper, when all you could catch was catfish and carp. Now we get 21-inch smallmouth, 17-inch crappie, 28-inch hybrid stripers ..."

"I hate to say it 'cause of the jobs and all, but since the mills closed the Mon's really cleaned up."

What Douglas may soon see is that mines, not mills, are still the Monongahela River's biggest menace, one that could set back water quality 50 years. Billions of gallons of highly acidic water is lurking in a labyrinth of abandoned mines under 30,000 acres from Fairmont, W.Va., to Pittsburgh to the confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, and in the Panhandle from Pittsburgh to Moundsville, W.Va. As the water rises to river level, it is certain to discharge at points near the main stem of the Monongahela with potentially devastating consequences.

A week ago, fisheries biologists, including the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's Rick Lorson, were given the grim details by a task force of government and private sector environmentalists in a briefing at West Virginia University's Center for Mine Drainage Research in Morgantown, W.Va.

"We don't frequently hop across state lines," Lorson said. "But this could be bad. Really bad. We want to document what fish are like now -- the densities and diversity -- so we'll know. In a worst-case scenario, the Mon could become dead water."

Some of that database will come -- by coincidence -- from biologists at California University of Pennsylvania, who have just received federal funding to sample 30 Monongahela River tributaries in southwestern Pennsylvania. Some of the smaller tributaries have never been surveyed and the larger ones, including Redstone, Whitely, Dunkard and Ten Mile, haven't been sampled in years, said David Argent, the California University professor who will lead the study with his colleague William Kimmel.

They have been awarded $240,000 by the United State Fish and Wildlife Service's State Wildlife Grant Program to study the tributaries, which are nursery waters for many species. Beginning in July, they will electro-shock and place gill net at the mouths of streams and at different points upstream, surveying 15 tributaries this year and 15 next year.

Lorson will survey only the main stem of the Monongahela, stepping up his efforts in the face of the impending mine water crisis. He will begin in May with Rotonone sampling in lock chambers and electro-shocking after dark downstream of the Maxwell, Braddock and Gray's Landing locks. They are all points where data has previously been collected, some beginning as early as 1968. If there is enough manpower and money, he said, he also will go below Dunkard Creek and Ten Mile, the two streams most immediately imperiled by acid mine drainage.

The Shanopin Mine near Dunkard, despite Department of Environmental Protection efforts to seal it, could overflow within a year, according to Ray George of the Environmental Protection Agency and a member of the task force. "The discharge may be significant," he said.

There will be others and issues of responsibility and funding are enormous, George added. "Is this likely to be a major public liability? It certainly could be."

Besides wanting to document species for posterity, Lorson is hopeful the survey data will give his agency leverage in seeking EPA and DEP support.

"The more information we can collect on species, the better bargaining chip we will have in getting funds, such as Growing Greener money," he said. Besides sampling in and around the locks, Lorson is scheduling creel surveys so that recreational use of the water can be quantified.

Fishermen such as Douglas, who fish almost daily, have a lot to tell.

"Big fish. Big numbers," said Douglas, who, with friend Jim Conte, has reeled 30-pound shovelheads to shore and seen even larger ones snap his line. He fishes off the bank of the Monongahela River four days a week at several points, including Pigeon Creek and 10 Mile, which are favorites for smallmouth and crappie.

"We seine for waterworms at the smaller tribs. The smallmouth love them," he said.

And while he has come to expect large smallmouth and walleye, the muskie has made him a local celebrity of sorts.

"Everywhere I go! My wife and I were in Angelo's for dinner and everyone said, 'Here comes that muskie fisherman,'" he said.

He never tires of telling the tale.

"Eight pound test and a shiner!" he said. "I'm fishing around 4 o'clock when he hit, and, I mean, I lost it! My knees went weak. He jumped three times. Shook his head. I'm thinking, 'This thing's gotta be 3-feet long, at least.' And those teeth!"

After a 25-minute fight, Douglas got the fish to shore, but when he picked up his camera he discovered he had no film. So he filled a trash barrel with water, put the muskie inside, and called his buddy Conte.

"He came running down with his son to take pictures," Douglas said. "Then I cut the line and released it.

"When I got home, my wife thought I was having a heart attack."

The state stocks muskie, tiger muskie, walleye and hybrid stripers on the Monongahela River. Through his own work, Argent has identified 40 species in the river, including some surprises. There's the mooneye, which is listed as state-endangered, the river carp sucker and the high fin carp sucker, thought to have been gone from the region but documented last fall.

Carp suckers and mooneye like cleaner water, said Argent. So seeing them was a heartening sign.

"We've found long-nosed gar, a candidate for endangerment, but probably more common than some people think, and quillbacks, which we know are common. We may rewrite the book on the Mon fishery," said Argent of his upcoming survey. "It will likely show we have more fish and more rare fish. We know from anglers that species listed as threatened are actually more common. We'll learn where they're living and how to protect them."

Thirty years ago, Argent caught a single bluegill at the Elizabeth lock and dam. A couple of decades later, 6,000 fish were sampled and three dozen species showed, including smallmouth, drum, white bass, walleye and sauger, along with a forage base that abounds with gizzard shad, emerald shiners and snub-nosed minnows.

And their numbers keep increasing. The 1990s, said Lorson, was when the Monongahela fishery came into its own.