Kyle Lake is almost drained for a reconstruction project, and a planned fish move is on hold.

State employees decided they need more time to complete their fish rescue.

We have more on what fishermen were hoping to see today.

With water draining slowly from Kyle Lake, the Fish and Boat Commission staff decided to move their fish capture to Thursday.

“We’re ust looking to see how they do this, how they manage to to pull the fish out of this lake,” says John Williams from Treasure Lake.

Williams and other onlookers hoping to see it on Wednesday will have to wait. Workers put a one-day hold on the fish rescue.

“As the remaining water is drained from the lake, the fish will come along with it. So they’ll come through the outlet structure and we’ll capture them,” says PFBC fisheries biologist Jason Detar from their Bellefonte office.

Some fishermen say the fish haven’t been biting recently.

“I went out over there at the pier over there and I had hip waders on and I sank down pretty far and after half-an-hour of only catching one small fish, I gave up,” says Mike Smith from Reynoldsville.

Smith remembers a prior lake drain in the mid-’80s and wanted to be back for this one. Officials say the dam is only supposed to last 50 years, but is already 106.

“We were really worried because this was a high-hazard dam and if we didn’t have the funds, we’d just have to breach it and it would look just like it is now,” says PFBC Commissioner William Sabatose.

The state recently released $4 million for reconstruction to new dam standards, which will close the lake for a few years, leaving just century-old stumps in the dirt.

“One gentleman told me now he knows why he was losing all his lures, because he was fishing in a stump, and he actually went over and retrieved some of the lures from over the years,” says Sabatose.

The fish will be moved to another lake near Punxsutawney.

“These fish will provide really good fishing opportunities in Cloe Lake throughout the next year, especially for the ice fishing season,” says Detar.

After giving the water a couple more hours to drain, the workers were planning to come back on Thursday morning and do the capture around 10 a.m.