JackM,
First, I will agree they do a pretty good job. With thousands of streams that they manage, they get the majority of them right, and we're bound to disagree on a couple. But overall, they have the same approach as they should. And I didn't say recreation should be accomodated with the least harm to the resource. I said recreation should be maximized with the least harm to humans (monetarily, traffic, water use, etc.), WITHOUT specific regard to the resource. I don't view our resources, in PA, as "natural" anymore, that ship sailed long ago. Our resources are manmade, with maybe a boost from nature, but its sufficiently screwed up to the point that there's no use "letting mother nature run its course", we've torn up her map and burnt the pieces. Thus, our resources are for us to use and alter in the way that benefits us the most, so long as we realize there are human consequences, good and bad, to any decision we make. I just think they underestimate some of the streams' ability to grow wild trout.
"I have no idea how many streams with Class B populations are stocked. Do you have some reason to believe it is a significant number?"
I don't have any numbers either, but my suspicion/personal experience would suggest "most" class B streams are stocked, and there's an awful lot of them. This is where the differences with PFBC policy come into play. We all pretty much agree class A streams shouldn't be stocked, and they aren't, and we all pretty much agree streams that have very few, or no, wild fish, should be stocked, and they are. But its in the class B streams there's dissention. Most of these streams couldn't be class A, but that leaves many that could. I believe its currently less than 2% of our "streams with natural reproduction" that are class A. There's a lot of possibilities out there.
The game by the PFBC is all played on when, and where, the streams are surveyed. Whether its a game with bad motives, or just lack of resources by the PFBC to properly monitor so many streams, I do not know. If you surveyed after a drought, some of our class A streams would no longer be class A. But survey after a few years of successive cool, wet summers, and our abundance of water with class A biomass would easily at least triple. There's also a seasonal migration. Many of these streams hold biomasses appropriate only for the headwaters, where the fish spend their summers, and go there in August and its class A by a long shot, shock the lower section and its devoid of fish. But then go back in early spring, and all those fish are spread out over a much bigger area, class B throughout. Or, often a dirt road adds siltation near the access point. Thus, trout populations are much lower near the access points, and they don't carry all that equipment all that far. Yet, after stocking, those stocked fish do move upstream and affect the better trout populations there. Basically, many of our class A streams are class A by "luck of the draw", no better or worse naturally than 5 times as many other streams that aren't class A. Of course, there's the limestoners, which is a different ball game. Spring Creek IS clearly superior to the streams we're talking about here, but it too once relied on stocked fish, and it was a pleasant "surprise" to the PFBC that wild fish thrived after hatchery planting ceased due to pollution and inedible trout.
I think, in some cases, the commission knows this and tries to survey the stream at a time and place where they know it won't be class A, so that they can add the stream, or keep it, on the stocking list. Once on the stocking list, its very hard to get back off it, because the stocked fish deflate the wild trout population. Thus, you could shock a stocked section, and get class B or lower of wild fish. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be class A if there were no stockies. It doesn't mean it could either, you have to judge each stream separately, and global policies do not work.
BTW, I'm mostly familiar, and thus talking about, small-medium sized streams in the NW and NC parts of the state, large streams are by and large too warm.
