Donegal article

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing.
 
Cool article. Those Browns in the photo are impressive. Obviously I hope this goes the Class A route.

 
Where did all the stocked fingerling rainbows go in a "historically" wild brown trout stream?

1 donegal gets poached hard
2 its habitat sucks
3 birds
4 its a brown trout stream

Why not stock fingerling browns on big spring and see how they fare?

Seriously why do this here and not clarks creek? Instead of using rainbows stock 10000 browns on Clarks and see the results.

Predetermined outcome? Fingerlings can't survive in a marginal at best stream. Why raise them at all?
 
Sal,
Who is poaching it? I drive by there 2X daily and fish there often and I rarely see anyone there fishing. Its been even less since regular stocking stopped. I did see one of the local landowners and his kids once with spin rods and tackle boxes in hand heading towards that FFO area only. But I have fished long stretches of this stream and rarely see anyone.
More likely for the other reasons you have stated altho am interested in what habitat improvements you would like to see. I keep hearing about cows in the creek and have never seen that either. I have fished all the way from 772 to the Chiques and they are all fenced out.
 
forget the poachers! camera killers probably take a higher toll. plus anyone who has fished that stream can see it has "some" sediment issues and could use some more canopy.
 
Short answer is the landowners.

Tim is right. I never meant poachers are number one but they are a factor. All I'm saying is, is donegal seriously considered a top candidate for this type of experiment? Can anyone say that with a straight face?
 
As far as habitat improvements.

Let's start with fixing all the legacy sediment banks to stop the massive erosion going on. Remove some of the one billion pounds of silt and actually add some real habitat.

You could fill a landfill with phosphorus and nitrate laden dirt.

A place for the fish to hide from birds wouldn't hurt either.

I've fished all its tribs and walked its entire length. Donegal is a sick limestone spring. But hey by all means chalk it full of foriegn trout, ponder their disappearance and just stop raising fingerlings. Why do it on a good stream.
 
btw the abundace of wild trout does not surprise me. Donegal 12 years ago or so had a good number of wild browns. With the good flows lately this summer I would possibly expect to see more next year.

Time to end the experiment and just let it be a wild trout fishery and help that along.
 
15 and 17 inch wild brown trout in the Donegal? That's really surprising. I've never seen any browns there other than little fingerling browns. I guess class A would be a good idea for that stream. Do they attribute the presence of a wild brown trout population to restoration efforts by TU? Or have they always been there?
 
jeremymcon wrote:
Do they attribute the presence of a wild brown trout population to restoration efforts by TU? Or have they always been there?

I am sure Mike will weigh in on this, however he was at the Tully TU meeting on Wednesday and spoke pretty extensively on this. From what I gathered, the main theory here was ceasing club stocking (including DTU) in this area has resulted in wild BT numbers. This suggests there was always trout reproduction, however predation by stocked trout resulted in lower WT numbers.

Sal, RT versus brown is a good question. I know that PFBC considers RT to be the hardier trout so that is likely the reasoning. Certainly RT have done very well in other limestone creeks such as BS and FSB. Interestingly, Mike said RT fingerling experiment in Green Spring was a horrible failure with a total of 3 returned fish. That's pretty bad. Habitat was cited as proximate theoretical cause.
 
I just returned from Vermont and something that I find really interesting is how transient the fish populations are... they move around A LOT. While I don't really think the RT fingerlings will survive in Donegal for very long but isn't it a little early to speculate where all the fingerlings went?

Using Vermont streams as an example here... many of the streams there get warm in the summer so the fish move to heavily oxygenated riffles and cold tribs or nursery waters.

I think one of the problems with fisherman in Pennsylvania
is that we want OUR TROUT to be in OUR FLYFISHING ONLY STRETCH or OUR ATW. Well it doesn't always work that way... fish move.

There are plenty of trout streams that are devoid of trout in the summer months... doesn't mean the trout are not surviving... if you think that is the case look at the Delaware River system and howw much those fish move around.
 
Even though I know nothing about Donegal, I kinda agree with NickR. Earlier this year I fished one of the fingerling stocked streams and got skunked, but later the same day I fished one of the branches to the stream farther up in the watershed and caught one of the fingerlings(fin clip and all). Fish move.

In the fall and winter I got to fish another one of the experimental streams, and even though I fished the stream not all that long after it was stocked, the fish still spread out fairly quickly. Got quite a few above the FFO waters. I've been itching to get back there and check it out again to see how they're doing but I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. It'll be interesting to hear how the fingerlings are doing in the other streams(assuming the PFBC is going to shock them as well).
 
My guess is the number of wild browns has gone up because regular stocking of adult fish was stopped. Chances are the wild browns have been there a long time.
 
Chaz wrote:
My guess is the number of wild browns has gone up because regular stocking of adult fish was stopped. Chances are the wild browns have been there a long time.

Exactly what I posted above which was Mikes thoughts on the matter as well. However, he did warn me not to get on the STOP STOCKING bandwagon. :p
 
jdaddy wrote:
Chaz wrote:
My guess is the number of wild browns has gone up because regular stocking of adult fish was stopped. Chances are the wild browns have been there a long time.

Exactly what I posted above which was Mikes thoughts on the matter as well. However, he did warn me not to get on the STOP STOCKING bandwagon. :p

Did he say why NOT get on the stop stocking over wild trout bandwagon?

He just gave a very good reason to get on it.

They reduced stocking of hatchery trout over wild trout, and the population of wild trout increased.

Is anyone surprised by that?
 
Troutbert,
Not so. The Donegal was a special case that didn't just involve stocking of adult trout; it involved what I believed to be overstocking (the key point) of adult trout, especially in a C&R situation, which I believed was reflected in the depressed forage fish population as seen in a fish population survey and, by extension, probable depression of the YOY wild trout population. The forage fish population was not depressed in the upstream stocked section, which was contiguous with the C&R area and was managed under general statewide regulations. The overstocking problem in the C&R area was quickly resolved by all interested parties, as all favored an attempt to improve the forage fish population as well as possibly the abundance of wild trout fingerlings. This all took place about a decade ago or more and was not precipitated by any "activism" to stop stocking over wild trout. It was a practical route initiated by the AFM in an attempt to resolve an apparent problem.

The improved population of wild trout older than YOY found this year is not reflective of having just switched to fingerling stockings since that change was only initiated less than a year ago. We saw other apparent YOY improvements prior to the switch to fingerling stockings. Furthermore, the stream had a very low density of apparently wild trout even prior to that.

Note: In the last decade adult trout were being stocked at most at the PFBC's normal rate.
 
jdaddy wrote:
Chaz wrote:
My guess is the number of wild browns has gone up because regular stocking of adult fish was stopped. Chances are the wild browns have been there a long time.

Exactly what I posted above which was Mikes thoughts on the matter as well. However, he did warn me not to get on the STOP STOCKING bandwagon. :p
Not really.
PFBC does not consider RT to be more hardy then browns, they put them in streams with wild trout in them so they don't interfere with wild trout reproduction. That and the fact that the growth rate in hatcheries is faster.
 
so Mike I think you hit the nail on the head about hoping this inspires a new generation.

since things seem to be going well any chance of expanding the C&R section? say maybe up to trout run ?
 
It would be nice to see all stocking removed from the Donegal for a period of 5-10 years and then see where the chips fall. With some habitat improvements and other stream work, I have no doubt the stream could be a vibrant wild BT stream. The big thing is curtailing the sediment and other runoff issues that affect the stream during heavy rain events.
 
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