Trout Fishing Study

Chaz

Chaz

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Sep 13, 2006
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Here is a quote from the study;
“For instance, during the spring study period for stocked streams, the study data indicates anglers caught 6.7 million trout. This catch figure is 1.5 times the number of trout stocked in these same waters. A portion of the additional catch rate can be attributed to the presence of some wild or ‘holdover’ stocked trout. The fact that nearly two-thirds of caught fish were ‘recycled’ by being returned to the water is an even more significant contributor to the high catch rates we documented.”

I don't think it is recycling at all, I believe they are catching more fish than were stocked because they are catching and harvesting wild fish during the early part of the season. There may be some anglers who fish the stocked streams that care about the difference, but the majority don't, all they care about is limiting out. That's all many of the Joe Wormdunker's talk about. Pine Creek is a good example of this, it is heavily stocked and has a good seasonal population of wild trout in it until mid-June most years. After a long winter in the big creek trout are hungry and hit just about anything that looks good to them. It is only later in the year they start keying in on flies.
 
Chaz

This is just one of many things that is wrong with this Study. After my review, I went through it again and had trouble reading it because of all my scribble marks noting bad or mis-information.

This study will do more harm than good for PA's wild trout population. The PFBC did a poor job - NO HORRIBLE - at determing what questions to ask the anglers. Evidence of absence is not absence of evidence.

You can not even properly evaluate the significance of wild trout to PA's economy because the PFBC did not even survey the more popular regulated waters. Therefore, the information is moot. Why even bother?????

Standard PFBC 1/2 A$$ed approach. :-x
 
I think state t.u. should do a study, and see what they come up with..
 
Good Point!
Are you going to be around this weekend. I'm going to be in Camp on Stony Fork.
 
If 92.7% of wild trout were put back, how is that not recycleing. If wild trout are being harvested on stocked waters, especially dureing the early season, it would be on marginal water anyway, putting their harvested numbers in a much lower catagory. Anyway, protecting wild trout should be a priority.........
 
If 92.7% of wild trout were put back, how is that not recycleing.

What about the other 6.3%? What happens to them? What PFBC is saying is that of 2.5 million "Wild Fish" caught during the first 8 weeks of the season, 2.3 million fish are being put back, what it means is these are NOT MARGINAL STREAMS, that they hold wild trout most of the year if not all year, and the regulations on these streams should be changed to reflect best management practices, Not catch and kill. It also means they are stocking where they don't need to. A full 37% of the fish caught in these streams are wild.
It also means that once the harvest of the stocked fish is complete that it won't stop there, the wild fish will also be harvested, thus reducing the wild trout populations in these streams.
 
chaz where do you get the 2.5 million wild fish? i don't see that in the report.
 
I never stated that I did'nt care about the wild trout being harvested. Let's face it, 92.7% is'nt too shabby over an 8 week stock truck mentality crowd. I was surprised it was even that low, frankly. I totally agree that management practices should be tilted in favor of resource, that's a given.

Education and practice help shape policy, it's being seen....
 
Not sure but it looks like he's mixing the wild trout study with the stocked trout study. They are different studies and because the sampling strategy were so different, they can't be readily compared. For example, the wild trout study (2004) surveyed over 200 stream sections for the entire 5 month harvest season. The stocked trout study (2005) concentrated on just 30 section on opening weekend and eight weeks after. In the mining industry that's called high-grading your sample and in most operations its grounds for dismissal. Anyway, these are the estimates from the two different studies:

Release rate
63.1% Stocked streams
92.7% Wild streams

Fish caught
6.7 million Stocked streams
343,240 Wild streams

Fish harvested
2.5 million of the 4.5 million stocked (56%)
25,000 of the estimated 600,000 legal sized wild trout (4.2%)

Although the PFBC admits some of the fish caught in the stocked study may be carry over or wild fish, all the wild and stocked trout in PA combined still don't add up to 6.7 million. A lot of fish are being caught more then once. Where Chaz comes up with 2.5 million wild trout I have no idea either.
 
# of fish caught - #of fish stocked.
 
Nope, it's either in the quote shown above or from the PFBC information on stocking.
 
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