Stop Stocking

[zwortman41]

Just came across this video today. I was just wondering if this was a viable option to possibly test on some PA waterways that support natural populations of trout but still remain on the stocking list. Does anyone else think the commission should start to focus more on habitat improvement than the stocking of trout? https://vimeo.com/123030884

 

[BrookieChaser]

I strongly support the ending of stocking trout in any flowing water. The stocking program is suppressing way more wild trout populations than are known to any of us.

Stocked trout are for kids and old people, and should be put in lakes with barriers inhibiting passage to other waterways.

 

[zwortman41]

I do support stocking in local streams that don't hold wild populations although i dont fish them very often but I would like to see the commission stop stocking waters that are able to hold wild populations of trout and put the money saved from stocking into stream management. I agree though by stocking fish in the streams that can hold wild populations it''s greatly suppressing their potential to hold stream bred fish.

 

[Char_Master]

Yes! Stop stocking trout in most cases. If the water currently supports natural reproducing fish, then cut all stocking and make sure the stream maintains a good enough health to confinue supporting them. If the stream currently is not healthy enough for trout but historically held natives, stop stocking and put money towards restoring the stream until it's healthy enough to reintroduce some Brookies and get them naturally spawning again. If the water was never home to trout of any species, do not stock them period but still work on restoring the health of the water for other native species such as Suckers, Smallmouth Bass, and Darters. One occasion where I do support stocking Trout (Char) is the stocking of Lake Trout in Lake Erie as they're a native species that is currently unable to reproduce due to a variety of factors but may be able to some day if stocking efforts continue in order to have multiple year classes of adult fish and water quality improves.

 

[John96]

Stocking has its place and I am not against it under the right circumstances, but it is over utilized. Unfortunately, it comes down to the politics of it. Stocking trout makes money. It kills me to think of all the potentially great wild trout streams held back by stocking. One particular stream comes to mind where I regularly catch wild trout (sometimes more wild trout than stockies). I often wonder what it would be like if the WT population didn't have to compete with the ST population.

 

[salmonoid]

BrookieChaser wrote:
I strongly support the ending of stocking trout in any flowing water. The stocking program is suppressing way more wild trout populations than are known to any of us.

Stocked trout are for kids and old people, and should be put in lakes with barriers inhibiting passage to other waterways.

So too bad for kids and old people? I would probably not be catching wild trout as an adult if I did not catch stocked trout as a kid. And if I live to be old, maybe I won'the easily be able to get where wild trout are.

Don't lose sight of the fact that any stream that has a reproducing population of rainbows or browns was created sometime (one or many, many generations ago) by stocked trout.

I would definitely support cessation of stocking in all Class A and B streams. Use the expensive limited hatchery resource wisely and don't put them where Mother Nature grows them well naturally.

 

[BrookieChaser]

Salmonoid, I understand what you're saying. Stocking of old did spread the wild trout populations, but the pelletheads of today are a long way from the feed stock that kicked off the wild trout populations we now enjoy.

I'll explain why I put it the way I did. You, and others, mention existing wild trout biomass cutoffs for stocking cessation. Here is my problem with that, a survey is snapshot of that day in that month in that year at those conditions and age classes (if present). All stocking needs stopped for a length of time, be it 5 or 10 years to determine if each stream holds wild trout, or any other species' population has expanded, so we can see exactly what that stream's potential is. Remember the Spring Creek spill? The wild trout will tell you if they should be there or not. Why should we be the ones to say wild trout should be subject to competition from fake fish when the stream is only capable of supporting a class D biomass in the first place? A stream can only support a finite number of fish, why should we add more sustained stress to a wild fish's fight for daily survival so we can have a few days of hobby time?

As for the kids and old people, they'll have pellethead ponds. Easy access for the old, and easier for kids to fish without trees and other obstacles. Maurice Goddard put a State Park within 30 miles of every citizen, most of those parks have lakes. Pelletheads will be close to everyone.

 

[MKern]

I like the idea, but who pays for licenses?

They have to see a return on their investment.

And, if they stopped stocking streams with nat. rep. anyone who lives where I live would have to drive for an hour or more to fish stocked fish. This would really decrease license sales.

I do think that raising trout and driving them all over the state isn't very cost effective; especially when it comes to cost of a trout stamp/cost to raise a single trout.

 

[zwortman41]

The whole point of the stopping stocking would be to promote wild trout growth in order to have a more healthy stream and do what hatcheries do but in the nature. I dont see why you would drive an hour to fish for stockies if you have a healthy wild trout stream near where you live.

 

[MKern]

I don't drive there, I fish all wild trout waters, but your typical license purchaser has no idea that trout can be wild.

I have witnessed a guy state, "Why do they stock such small trout?" and then throw a 6 inch fish on the bank.

Wild trout anglers are the minority...and money talks.

 

[afishinado]

Here are many pages of some really good info as well as opinions expressed here on this very subject:

Stocking 1

Stocking 2

Stocking 3

Stocking 4

Stocking 5

Stocking 6

Stocking 7

Stocking 8

 

[vcregular]

Bottom line - stocking is not sustainable. It will be only a matter of time until the streams where we (wild trout enthusiasts) wants to see stocking halted occurs. And it will come down to money.

 

[KenU]

I can't stay out of this discussion. To be truthful, I consider stocking over native trout to be sinful and stocking over naturalized wild trout populations not far behind that.

Yeah, PA is not Montana. I have heard that from our current PFBC ED. So what! We have some of the finest wild brown trout streams east of the Mississippi. Most are limestoners. You all know their names. And you don't have to fly to get there. Literally millions of anglers are within a day's drive.

And our mountain freestones hold plenty of brookies. They aren't as big as the browns from the limestoners, but the places where they live are magnificent. I've been fishing theses streams since I was a kid and that was a long time ago. And brookies are eager eaters. That's how I learned about trout fishing.

The question "how do we get kids interested in fishing if we don't stock trout" is silly. I started out fishing for chubs behind my uncle's place, graduated to sunfish, suckers and catfish in Parker Lake and finally to trout when I turned 12. Kids like to catch fish. They don't care what kind and lose interest if they aren't hooking something every five or ten minutes. Take them out for bluegills.

 

[afishinado]

Troutbert wrote: (4/6/2015)
PA has moved somewhat in that direction, starting around 1980, with Operation Future. They surveyed the stocked trout streams. Most (not all) of the Class A streams were taken off the stocking list.

Since then, some Class Bs have been removed. And some wild trout streams were taken off because they were very small, got low usage, and were in remote places with bad forest roads that make it expensive to reach with the hatchery truck.

But there still is a very large mileage of wild trout waters stocked by both the PFBC and the coop hatcheries.

It's a political football. There are people who want more of the wild trout stream mileage taken off. And there are people, many organized in sportsmens clubs who want those streams to continue to be stocked, and they work with their legislators who are on the fish and game committees, and they put pressure on the PFBC.

Exactly how the political situation is different in Montana and some of the other states that have gone further in the wild trout direction, I'm not really sure.

Because in any place where trout are stocked, there will be a constituency of people who want that to continue. That is not unique to PA.

^^^^I cannot express the state of union for stocking trout in PA better than Troutbert wrote above in a few paragraphs.

Not to say we can't do better and we should continue to push for more emphasis on wild trout and less stocking in streams that are viable for wild trout.

The policy seems to be drifting our way, albeit slowly, and perhaps more because money is tight and stocking is expensive. But whatever the reason, we should go with the flow and do what we can to increase it.

One final thought. There are many streams that do not and can not support wild trout. I am in favor of stocking those streams for anglers paying for a license to fish them.

Many hundreds of thousands of anglers in this state, aka the vast majority of trout anglers fall into this category. Let us not forget that fact.

If the PFBC depended solely on the wild trout guys to exist....well they couldn't really exist to an great extent, and would have an even smaller budget to be spent to protect or enhance cold water streams.

 

[KenU]

Montana still stocks trout They just don't stock streams. Stocking streams that do not hold naturally reproducing trout expands angling opportunities. I'm all in favor of that. But stocking over wild trout and especially native trout is straight out of the 19th century when people thought Nature was inefficient and wasteful and that humans could enhance streams by stocking them. Now we know better. It is - as several on this board have said - wasteful of natural resources and no longer an economically viable way to provide trout on a massive scale.

 

[zwortman41]

I definitely support continuation of stocking in streams that do not hold wild or native fish because that is where most people develop their love for trout fishing. There are enough streams like that around the state that people have access so why not stop the stocking of reproductive streams to save time, money, and wild trout populations. I find my self dumbfounded that the commission still stocks streams like big spring, Yellow creek (Bedford), Falling springs, and most of all a class a wild trout stream called clover creek in blair county. Clover creek is a wild brown trout gem that flows into the Frankstown Branch and although you have to get land owner permission to fish most parts of the stream its one of my favorites. It just kills me that this Class A wild brown trout stream is stocked with rainbows and hatchery browns on its upper end and then mix in with the already great population of wild fish that exist.

 

[Dave_W]

zwortman41 wrote:
Just came across this video today. I was just wondering if this was a viable option to possibly test on some PA waterways that support natural populations of trout but still remain on the stocking list. Does anyone else think the commission should start to focus more on habitat improvement than the stocking of trout? https://vimeo.com/123030884

Zwortman,
Welcome to our online community.

The issue of stocking over wild trout has been much debated here for years (as Afishinado points out in post 11).

Many of us favor compromise and a middle path on the issue.

 

[SteveG]

The issue is further compounded by harvest. Due to the deeply ingrained over-harvest mentality that some have, it actually has some wild trout supporters wanting stocking over wild fish, in the belief that it's somehow "protecting" the wild fish.

My personal belief is that Class A stretches should be studied, expanded in length, and then placed under C&R regs. Areas that do not favor wild fish should be stocked for harvest to appease that crowd, and harvest can only occur during a limited season (not the majority of the year). That might keep both sides happy. Wild trout guys see that the PFBC is concerned with conservation, and the truck chasers get a harvest that is correlated to the cost of raising hatchery trout.

I understand that this would limit trout opportunities in some streams that aren't conducive to fish holding over, but there are other species to fish for.

 

[Eccles]

KenU wrote:
Stocking streams that do not hold naturally reproducing trout expands angling opportunities. I'm all in favor of that.

This is a line of thought I really don't understand. So many on here argue strongly that stocking over wild trout is detrimental to those wild trout and those arguing this way roll out various studies to support their points. That's all fine. There's is some ambiguity in those studies findings when the papers are given a close reading but still the consensus is that stocked fish will impact wild fish through both obvious short term impacts and more subtle longer term effects.

But then, in the same breath, as KenU does above, many of those same wild trout advocates don't have a problem with stocking trout into waters that "do not hold naturally reproducing trout..". But stocking any fish into any wild water has impacts. In waters that don't hold naturally reproducing trout those impacts occur on the fish and other organisms that are already there just in the way it does with wild trout (or at least the impact is the same if the mechanism that causes it may differ). Why do many wild trout advocates seem to get so righteously indignant when their quarry is impacted but very myopic when it may be some non-target species or environment.

There's no getting around the fact that stocking impacts everything. I think the only real place (with a nod to Salmonoid's "kids and old people") for stocked fish is in man-made dams, ponds and lakes. Particularly if they are then stocked with triploids. This would at least provide trout fishing opportunities. But the idea that we should have trout fishing opportunities more broadly is a corrupt concept. The only reason we expect to be able to fish for trout is because of the overweening legacy of past generations who thought that they should control the natural environment and what is in it. Now we think a little different - some of us do anyway - and see the consequences of much of that control, the very thing wild trout supporters advocate against. And it's difficult to teach people about the environment, about the diversity of habitats and why some animals (aquatic and terrestrial) live here and not there, when the whole aim of the State organization and many anglers is to homogenize that diversity so that there is trout for everyone! Yippee! Not. Surely you shouldn't have trout (or salmon, redfish, bonefish, tarpon, marlin ... wolves, leopards, lions, elephant, mammoth, T. rex...) ... trucked to you just because, well, just because you stomp your feet and say, "but I want it". You get trout if you live near a creek that supports naturally reproducing fish. If you don't, well then you poor buggers, you only get a host of other wonderful species many of which are well suited to targeting with fly gear if that's your technique of choice.

The PFBC should be an organization that looks after natural environments and works hard to ensure there are healthy, naturally reproducing populations of fish appropriate to the water type. Healthy populations that can support being fished for and harvested at appropriate rates. Stocking domestic lines should be done in domesticated waters. Any other stocking should be science lead, driven by careful identification of populations to use to get degraded waters back to their former naturally reproducing status - whether that is trout or any other species.

Of course I'm dreaming. There is realpolitick and much history to surmount here. But then I don't think fishing should be the equivalent of going to the fishmonger and buying your catch.

 

[pcray1231]

Why do many wild trout advocates seem to get so righteously indignant when their quarry is impacted but very myopic when it may be some non-target species or environment.

Largely because the impact on those other species is small.

Most on this board, me included, are going to favor eliminating stocking on streams which do or could support a viable fishery with wild trout. Of course, drawing the line on what "viable" means, as well as determining which streams "could", will lead to debate. And we have debated it. But if we just assume agreement on this main point, we can move onto your point above.

The above controversial category is, ultimately, the destination of a very small % of the trout stocked in this state. The majority are put into largish waterways that get way too warm in the mid-summer, that, without a doubt, cannot hold a sustaining population of wild trout. That's not to discount the odd wild traveler that may pass through. But streams where wild trout would not thrive and people wouldn't fish for trout in such places.

And generally, these streams, in their natural state, are summertime bass fisheries. The stocking program, by and large, turns smallmouth bass streams into trout streams for a month or two of the year. And the general feeling is that bass aren't impacted very strongly by the presence of stocked trout. The bass aren't very active in the early spring months, and they inhabit different habitats within the stream. They feed on largely different things, and not at the same times. That's why there isn't more concern. The trout don't negatively impact them very much.

I will admit there is a period in late spring where there's some overlap. As the bass are becoming active, the trout are nearing the end of their time, but still there. I don't know how much impact that has, as I think the habitat niche that each has is still different enough to mean there isn't a whole lot of impact.