19 June 2025
Despite the summer heat scum on Schenley Park’s Panther Hollow Lake, I’ve known for a long time there are fish in there.
The pond-sized “lake” with concrete edges attracts fish-eating birds on migration including belted kingfishers, great blue herons and the famous American bittern of April 2023. The birds don’t stay long because the habitat is not suitable for their nests.
Birds aren’t the only ones who know about the fish. On a walk in late May I found a family with three little kids enjoying the morning at Panther Hollow Lake. Dad, with gear and fishing license, was teaching the kids to fish. When he caught a little fish he called to one of the kids to come reel it in. Each child had a turn. Catch and release.
What are birds and people catching? Small fish of three species, as found during the 2024 Phipps BioBlitz. All of them are native to North America.
- Green Sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)
- Pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus)
- Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)
All the fish I’ve seen are small, though a large catfish (I think) broke the surface one day. In 2017 they found goldfish and catfish too. Read more about it here: My Heavens! We Have Fish.
p.s. Check out Phipps BioBlitz results from 2025. Alas it rained and rained so it wasn’t as good a list as 2024.
CORRECTION on 19 June at 11:13am: If you saw this blog in the few hours after it was published, you saw a photo near the end of Dr. Brady Porter, the Phipps BioBlitz fish expert, holding a large-mouth bass. No, that fish did NOT come out of Panther Hollow Lake. A big thank you to Stephen Tirone for identifying the fish and pointing out my error!
That is a largemouth bass he is holding there in the photo, but I don’t see it in the Bioblitz results or in your article. Am I missing something?
Aha! Thanks for clearing that up, Stephen. They must have asked him for a photo and not explained that it was from somewhere else! I’ve removed the photo.