I realize that fingerling stocking was halted on the Tully. My fishing experience has been that the fingerlings were surviving quite well. I live fairly close to the Tully and fish it quite often. It was my favorite non-wild trout place to fish. I would catch the smaller fingerlings along with holdovers winter and spring. By late summer and fall even the fingerlings were great looking fish. I found under the fingerling stocking program, both the number of fish and size distribution was very good in the Tully. I regularly caught some hefty, well colored rainbow and brown holdovers.
Last year was the first year that the stream had both holdover fingerlings and stocked adults, so the fishing was good. I believe that stocking adults only, will decrease the overall number of trout, since far more fingerlings were stocked than adults. I’m not even sure if the size will necessarily increase either by stocking adults only.
I was disappointed when I recently fished the Tully and caught some pale, wimpy freshly stocked fish. The Little J is a great example of the success of the fingerling program. I know it doesn’t work everywhere, but I believe it worked at the Tully. Just my opinion.
