C&R - Extended Trout Season

[krayfish]

Jack,

If the demand for recreational use isn't there, why stock? Project to improve cover, water quality and let mother nature handle the rest. Option 'b', plant koi in it.

 

[JackM]

My scenario is that there is a significant demand for the recreational opportunity in the lower reaches.

And along with this, it isn't really fair to anglers who wish to harvest to be relegated either to stocked trout or worse yet ugly streams and stocked trout.

The legal limit is rarely reached. PFBC probably has fairly accurate statistics. If the limit is 5, very few anglers are capable of limiting out. And there are not that many anglers harvest 50 trout a year. Maybe you can give some examples, but I suggest these are rare examples. As I said, PFBC knows these estimates. Whether they are public or not I do not know.

 

[troutbert]

JackM wrote:
Fictional Stream #3.

Southwest PA mountain freestone.

Native Brookies in higher elevations, but not in the final 3 miles of run to the receiving river. Yet this lower portion of the stream, while relatively infertile like the upper reaches, remains cool to trout until early to mid July every year. To be sure, there are likely some wild trout in this lower section during some part of the year, but not enough to be considered a recreational fishery.

Add to this the wide-open access (most on public land), the beauty of the surroundings, and the lack of other similar waters available to the surrounding community, and you have a quality wild trout stream (at least in the upper reaches) that probably could be stocked in the lower reaches without significant harm. And perhaps it probably should be stocked in the lower reaches by the agency charged with trying to conserve a resource while assuring adequate recreational opportunities to the public.

If we knew the name of the stream, we could have a better discussion about it.

Are there people pushing to end stocking in that section? On a stream section with only a few wild trout, early in the year?

The situation you described is very different than on the streams we've been discussing in this thread. The streams discussed in the OP are all Class A streams.

Young Womans Creek, discussed above, was Class A in most years. It dipped just a bit below Class A after the extreme drought of 1999, and that was when the management was changed.

 

[JackM]

I thought we were discussing hypothetical streams? In any event, I think the things you bring up are factors in the process of deciding if and when and where and how much supplemental stocking on streams with wild trout reproduction is sensible. PFBC manages this and I think they do well. They aren't going to satisfy the majority at PAFF because we represent a small amount of the total trout anglers. I do think we get more attention to our interests than the other anglers, and that is OK since we are on the side of conserving the NATURAL resource and our preferences are less costly to uphold.

 

[krayfish]

Jack,

When I started fishing, my dad told me to bring home all the fish I could. He loved eating fish. Or so he said. My first season, I put around 190 trout in our chest freezer.....he ate 2. After that, I never kept one. I'd catch and relocate to areas that got little pressure. I'm thinking the last fish I kept might have been a 28" walleye back in 1988. He did eat that one.

As for your fictional stream, I see nothing wrong with stocking the lower section that gets heavily utilized. If you are trying to see who'd be worried about the stockers displacing the wild fish, put me on the 'not concerned' list. I would change regulations in the wild section to c&r or decrease the creek limit.

 

[JackM]

" My first season, I put around 190 trout in our chest freezer...."

Ah, the indiscretions of youth.

 

[Stenonema]

This thread reads an awful lot like Stocking Wild Streams. I believe there is alot of cross over.
Theories based on assumption.

 

[JackM]

To which theories do you refer? And what assumptions are being made? Certainly there are extrapolations from "studies," but such is the nature of advancing knowledge. Knowledge does not always advance linearly.

 

[troutbert]

JackM wrote:
My scenario is that there is a significant demand for the recreational opportunity in the lower reaches.

And along with this, it isn't really fair to anglers who wish to harvest to be relegated either to stocked trout or worse yet ugly streams and stocked trout.

A lot more people recognize a strawman than you might expect.

 

[JackM]

You are saying my hypothetical stream is a fantasy? I think it is fairly common, throughout the Commonwealth, not just in the Laurel Highlands.

 

[greenghost]

krayfish wrote:

If it weren't for stocking, no letort browns, no little j and on and on. Unless I have zero reading comprehension, which is possible, I don't recall reading anything documenting that tossing stocker bronot h into a wild brown stream destroys it. I think Mike had previously posted that the wild fish usually inhabit different water/lies from the stockers. The pellet fed fish don't have the natural instincts and typically don't survive all that long. They make perfect targets for guys looking to limit out on a heavily pressured stream containing a wild fish population.

Actually in Bachman's trout stream studies at PSU n the 80's, it was shown that stocked fished played havoc on wild trout populations.

Domesticated trout literally overran their wild counterparts, which by nature are wary, solitary, efficient creatures. Eventually, the fighting and foment resulted in fewer fish.

"If you have a big, tough motorcycle gang, there's no question who's going to win the fight," said Bachman. "Then they go off, leaving a trail of destruction behind them."

This is a quote from PFBC after their big shift in the late 80's to cut back stocking regardless of C&R regulations...

"What we've seen when we stop stocking is a 100 to 150 percent increase in the numbers of wild trout," said Martin Marcinko, the commission's cold-water unit leader at the time.

 

[JackM]

The Bachman study is only one piece of the puzzle and it only advances us to theory. There are many valid criticisms of that study. There are others he built on and that have been carried forth since his study, but my impression, and God forbid I say this, was that his experiment/observations were liable to subjective limitations and he was looking to discover what he did discover. The experience of most stocked trout is not as cushy as those stocked into Spruce Creek. Let's be realistic about that.

 

[BrookieChaser]

I thought the Bachman study cited was from Spring Creek?

 

[greenghost]

Realism? Well, that study was the springboard for Operation Future by PFBC in the 80s. Based on the basic findings by Bachman-- disputed or not-- the pretense of "stocking over wild trout populations is bad" proved themselves in the field. Waterways reserved exclusively for wild trout grew steadily, nearly doubling from 400 miles in 1983 to over 750 miles in the 90s (when these facts were cited from a study.) I'm sure they far surpass that number today. (I just don't have the time to research right now)

In those waters, wild trout are typically two or even three times as plentiful as hatchery trout in the state's 9,000 miles of managed waters.

 

[Mike]

Greenghost, how do such stories get started? The springboard for Operation Future was the completion of the coldwater inventory, which involved surveying each of Pa's stocked trout streams. Those surveys were conducted from 1976 until 1981. The purpose of those studies was to develop a stream classification system in which stream sections classified similarly would be managed the same no matter where they occurred in the state. It was primarily about developing a logical trout stocking/allocation system, but it also was about a portiont of that classification system including no stocking based on the biomass of wild trout. In 1976, and even in 1980 we had no idea what a Class A stream's biomass would be. In fact, we did not even have a name (Class A) for those stream sections. The coldwater inventory was done to escape from the county allocation system of distributing stocked trout. One of my first assignments was to do the calculations (long hand) for each county and stream regarding the distribution of trout under that system. FUTURE went into effect in 1982 and that was not by chance alone; it followed on the heals of the coldwater inventory's completion. Bachman's study was taking place in the cir 1974 time period. His major advisor, Dr Robert Butler, was my mentor. The study was not the reason for FUTURE, although it did provide insight and had some influence on at least my thinking. I won't speak for others on that specific point.

 

[BrookieChaser]

Not to mention the Vincent study.

 

[Mike]

Not so. The Vincent Study was published in 1987.

 

[BrookieChaser]

Mike I thought the Vincent study took place in the early 70's?

I didn't mean the Vincent study as why the PFBC started the "Future" plan. I meant it supported the idea of not stocking over wild fish, similar to the Bachman study. I should've explained myself better.

 

[krayfish]

Ok since Mike is in on this thread...I'll come right out and ask 2 questions:

Does statistical data or do any of the studies clearly show that stocking trout in a stream with a small wild trout population result in decimated wild fish numbers?

Taking yourself away from any position that your employer might have on this topic.....what is your personal opinion, thoughts or feelings on stocking over / near wild fish? Didn't you post a while back that not long after stocking, shocking showed that many of the stocked fish were MIA?

Ok, I said 2 but I have one more. Has there ever been any consideration in freshening the genetic pool by having eggs brought in from Montana or somewhere else or by taking eggs from our own spawners in the letort or other streams that may have strong or unique gene pools?

 

[Stenonema]

Krayfish, Decimated is relative. What do you consider a justifiable percentage. What is the cutoff that does not make stocking over a wild trout population justifiable, in you opinion?