A small, opening day morning creel survey of trout anglers occurred on Monocacy Ck, a stocked limestoner with substantial wild brown trout populations in segments of limited good habitat, located in downtown Bethlehem. While the 35 anglers interviewed harvested numerous stocked trout, the creels only contained one wild brown trout. Thirty-five anglers roughly represented 10-15% of the opening morning angler usage, based on past angler counts. Expand the numbers arithmetically and you'll estimate that about two limits of wild trout would have been been harvested by 350 anglers in an URBAN stream. Meanwhile, another investigator, this time the local WCO, an avid wild trout angler and fly fisherman, checked other creels on Northampton Co streams with wild brown trout populations, including Martin's Ck, with similar results. He saw either one or no wild trout in the creels despite substantial wild trout numbers being present in these stocked streams. His personal interest led him to specifically look for wild trout in the creels. These aforementioned observations in urban and suburban areas, where fishing pressure is high, do not support the overharvest scenario sometimes portrayed (feared) with respect to opening day harvest of wild trout in stocked trout streams, at least not on wild brown trout streams (and my recollection is that results were similar on Penns Ck in a much more extensive creel survey on the upper stocked section some years ago).

Great info and insight. Thanks Mike. I love this kind of empirical data.

That is my anecdotal observation. I live 8 minutes away from a wild brown/brookie trout stream that is stocked. It is only stocked wth rainbows to protect inbreeding with the wild fish. Being so close I stop after work a lot and am friendly with the regular bait guys (few people fly fish - it is general regs). We always joke because they only get a few browns all year on bait (mostly Power bait) while I fly fish and catch nearly all browns. The bait guys think that there are hardly any browns in the stream based on their results, but electroshocking in the area usually brings in about 200 browns in the standard 300m sampling length.

However, 10 years ago or more there was a core of older bait fishermen that just hammered the wild browns. They used salt minnows at night and dead drifted small worms, mealies, or caddis larvae with very little weight during the day. They also stalked the fish like herons and generally used a very long drift to reach the fish. They never waded in unless they absolutely had to. Often they used fly tackle to drift bait. One of my old saws is that I see less highly skilled bait fishermen anymore. However, the really good bait fishermen can still catch plenty of wild browns - just don't see many of them lately. Wading right into a pool or chucking a rig out and letting it sit all morning wouldn't do it.

Smart trout, or smart FF'ers, you gotta love it.

I agree with Jeff,the real good bait guys are a small minority of the opening day crowd.Sadly many are no longer with us as they have died off.
Another thing to consider this year is the extremely low and clear water.If the streams were high and dirty with a lot of worms washed in those wild fish get a little more reckless while gorging themselves.

I used to consider my self a highly skilled bait fisherman. I would hammer a ton of fish on bait a C&R. That got old so i made the switch.

On an outing last year i had went out with my uncle and missed a ton of fish. I did keep a few because of deeper hooksets. I was bummed because in my hay day i could pick up a fish and hook it in the top of the mouth just like a fly.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!!!

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While this is true, I tend to think Mike's point remains valid, if I can make it more directly: a relatively small amount of wild trout get harvested in the mixed streams. How many are killed because they were hooked deep and were considered too small to "creel" and thus released is another issue altogether.

I wonder if one of the reasons that fewer wild trout are creeled during the early season is because the wild and stocked trout tend to live in different parts of the stream. The stocked trout tend to live in the obvious holding lies, the pools and deep riffles. The wild trout tend to hold in the more subtle holding lies in the shallower water. The early season bate fisherman tend to fish the more obvious deeper holding lies that tend to have a lot of the stocked fish in them.

I agree that the "fair weather fisherman" that come out for opening day are most successful on stocked trout. Like Jeff said, catching native fish or just holdovers takes a different set of skills, in general. This is true whether you use flies or bait. A good fisherman is a good fisherman.

When I was a kid, many years ago, we would say they all go home once the dumb ones are caught becasue they say there are no fish left.

Then my neighbor, who taught me to flyfish, and I would have the streams to ourselves all May and June except for right after the stock trucks went around again.

I fished part of the second day on aproved trout waters and caught 18 fish. Half of them were either native or holdovers. I was primarily fishing two flies; a sucker spawn and a size 18 pheasant tail. All of the stocked rainbows were caught on sucker spawn and almost all of the native or holdovers were caught on the small pheasant tail including three heafty, healthy browns.

Just food for thought. Maybe coincidence but I thought it interesting at the time.

SHOCK

This is somewhat of a relief...I was checking the stream the other day and honestly I was doing a bit of stalking myself to see if any wild browns were creeled...I didn't see any.
I don't see a lot of the typical opening day stuff to be effective on these fish...don't think they'll eat power bait and don't think they want something sitting still/plunked on the bottom.
On the other hand, when I still fished bait, I nailed wild fish on the Mo. They key is to cut off a piece....uh nevermind

I don't think the issue is the amount of wild trout harvested as the real concern. I feel stocked trout have a bigger effect on wild trout in respect to added competition for available food. Moving many wild trout from their prime lies. The point is that 20 to 30 wild trout removed from many streams in the state over a day period can really hurt future breeding stock. All those fish had to be over 7in and were most likely capable of producing offspring. Sorry for the rant I just hate that the state stocks trout over perfectly healthy wild and native populations it does nothing positive for the wild fish.

The whole idea of bait/spin fishermen tossing out a line and letting it sit under a bobber or on the bottom is just foreign to me. I never did it when I bait fished, and never saw anyone else doing it either. Bluegills in lakes, and catfish in the river, yeah, but not trout in streams. For eggs, powerbait, worms, millies, wax worms, etc., you did your best to dead drift or swing whatever you were using, bouncing bottom along the way, keeping a tight line and feeling for bites. For minnows and imitations, sometimes you drifted them the same way, and sometimes you worked them like a streamer or spinner. Often a little of both.

Powerbait is essentially the same as eggs and egg imitations. Deadly on fresh stocked rainbows, as well as wild rainbows by the way. Sucks on stocked browns, and bout the only time it's good on wild browns is when the suckers are running.

If you want to catch freshly stocked browns, minnies was the way to go. Live, salted, spinners, streamers and buggers, etc. It works just fine on wild browns too, sometimes, but hatches will screw it up.

Stocked brookies, anything in the worm family was best. Mealies, waxworms, garden worms, etc. But they would eat just about anything, minnows and eggs would take a few as well.

Not to beat a dead horse but I flyfished the Monocacy on Sunday morning and did quite well on wild browns. Did not catch a single stocked fish ( from this year at least). The bait guys were cursing me and I only saw one fish on a stringer, which was a stocked bow. Gotta love when you are catching fish on the fly right below and above the bait guys as they sit empty handed.

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with regards to my own sampling of the exact same stream at the exact same time, plenty. i'd found at least a half dozen dead browns in three popular stretches, not including the park area because i didn't go there that way.

there's seveal dead fish littering the runs there this last week, though. i cannot confirm their species.

there was also one dead rainbow downstream from a posse of people who were posing for hero pictures while hoisting their "pallies" above their heads after leaving the entrails in teh stream. i'm convinced they creeled and threw it back into the stream as they loudly (drunkenly) wondered, "what's that guy doing" as i was taking a picture of it for threads which contain OPs like "prettiest fish you caught"

if people _really_ cared, you'd stop stocking this obviously class a stream, however, conviently several stretches don't seem to meet that requirement. perhaps a start might be to deny the inevitable permits for the meat crowd's double header of pleasure when the "sportsmens' clubs" CCC and Monocacy F&S both stock it with grossly oversized slamhogs for "private" contests on open water, and promptly threaten, cajole, bully and chase anyone who's not in their ranks out?

to say nothing of the water the f3 people lay claim to, or the guys in NZ field and stream or whatever they're called. i'm sure those stretches are both class a.

eh wot?