The PFBC is Puzzling...Question About Stocking Wild Streams

i'll only add 2 things to this discussion:

1. The streams in question will be listed as "CLASS A" officially, which will offer them greater protection, and when you are talking about Lehigh Valley Streams, that is a big deal.

2. If streams have a "CLASS A" bio-mass, ie. enough naturally reproducing trout to sustain a fishery, why add more? I will concede that in the very heavily fished LV streams it might make sense, so keeping the pre-season stocking is a good compromise.

I believe the WCO that spoke at our TU meeting mentioned that they did post opening day angler counts to see how many people this would effect. He seemed to think that was a limited amount. I tend to agree but that is based only on my experience.

Sounds like a decent compromise to me. Better protection for the stream and the continuation of stocking for opening day guys.

my .02
 
Here's the proposed rule change from PFBC website regarding the stocking of Class A streams. Looks like if a Class A stream has historically been stocked, and has high angler usage, it will continued to be stocked.
 
Stocking trout in a class A or wild trout stream is a bad idea and all but means death for the wild trout population. The average population of angling Yinzers don't know the difference and will bonk them all on the head.
 
EBCK wrote:
Stocking trout in a class A or wild trout stream is a bad idea and all but means death for the wild trout population. The average population of angling Yinzers don't know the difference and will bonk them all on the head.
Click to expand...

Except the majority of the streams that are included in the proposal have been in the position of having wild trout being stocked over, probably for years. And they are still Class A, in spite of the stocking. The proposal becomes a reasonable compromise between biology and public angler perception, the latter which often trumps biology. I'd be fine if they didn't stock the streams in question, but I don't believe that formalizing what they are already doing spells the death knell for the wild fish.
 
EBCK wrote:
Stocking trout in a class A or wild trout stream is a bad idea and all but means death for the wild trout population
Click to expand...

This is not true at all and pretty ridiculous to even spout off about.
 
How do you figure? Take a look around.
 
Bwhahaha really? My God.......
 
Stephen-Colbert-Popcorn.gif
 
Haha really? That's not exactly an answer. There used to be three streams in my neighborhood. Said streams had a very healthy population of wild, naturally reproducing brown trout. Streams had been discovered by your average powerbait weilding yinzer and completely wiped out. The only thing left are empty containers of nightcrawlers and tangles of broken off line and baithooks hanging from the trees. so yea, lets stock the wild water, put it on the stocking report and watch the carnage thats sure to follow. Its simple, keep wild and hatchtards seperate.
 
For record, I am against stocking wild streams. Your stance of it wiping out wild trout is pretty ridiculous. For instance the streams we are discussing in this thread are all stocked class a waters. They have been stocked class a waters for a very long time and continue to be class a. Anglers will never clean out a stocked stream if it has a healthy population of wild trout. Is there a chance they put a dent in the the population? Sure, a very small dent.

Most of us feel stopping the stocking of class a will create an even larger population of wild trout. This is what we would like to see. Also, most of us are in acceptance of a few of these streams to receive a single stocking before opening day to keep anglers in the area happy, because of their location in park systems and having large angler density in the area.

Your thoughts on wild trout completely disappearing due to stocking is simply ridiculous.

Btw....name those streams. You have nothing to lose such there are no longer fish in them. There are many anglers in here from your area and can either refute your claims or agree with you. If it is the former, I will apologize and change my whole outlook on this situation.
 
When I was 13 I caught a large brown trout from a stream that hadn't been stocked for ten or fifteen years. I took the fish to a local store owner who entered it in the Big Fish Contest of the Patriot News. The trout was entered as a brook trout. The pictures that were on the cover of the Fish Finder Magazine which was then printed and free at all Fishing Stores showed that the trout was indeed a Brown. I didn't care and it made no difference to me then. The PFBC looked into it and visited the Taxidermist to identify the trout. That wasn't all they looked into. The previously unstocked trout stream was stocked the following year and is to this day. I remember that I was excited to see it stocked. They put Brook trout on top of the wild brown trout pop. I later learned from the champion of this idea at the PFBC, that it was accepted that this would not damage the wild pop. The stream that was stocked is a relatively unfertile freestoner with limited reproduction. The stocking had a very large impact on this pop of wild brown trout. I believe that the above mentioned factors such as fertility have an influence here. The number of trout stocked has declined in recent years and the Brown trout numbers are climbing once again.
My point is that the impact of stocking will vary upon many factors and no one stream will be impacted the same as another. What are we gambling with? I believe that we continue to overlook the most important factor, which is Genetics. Wild trout through generations will develop unique characteristics to the individual watershed. In many cases becoming irreplaceable with any stocked trout from any hatchery. Stocked trout are genetic pollution as were the pheasants that they continued to stock in spite of having a naturally reproducing pop. We all know what happened to the wild pheasants.
It will take more than fishing pressure and the placement of stocked trout to wipe out a pop of wild brown trout. However throw in another negative factor such as poor spawns, disease, thermal issues etc. and you have the proverbial nail in the coffin. Then after all the wild trout are gone, we can all argue over the cause of our loss, habitat destruction, disease, sprays, pollution, climate change etc. etc.
Genetics.... Genetics.... Precisely the ability to adapt is what is bred out of hatchery reared animals. All this of course is in my humble opinion.
Many streams that are not Class A are great streams to fish that offer miles of less that pressured trout and sometimes large trout in a natural setting and holding in lies that make sense. Worth the time and the miles on my legs for the experience even though I am getting a little older and don't like the brush as much as I once did. I am of the opinion that there is NOT one single population of wild trout that exists in our great state worth intentionally degrading for the benefit of any fisherman or any amount of money no matter how small the population.

Farm-reared brown trout differ from wild brown trout in three main ways. They
differ genetically due to founding effects and to subsequent domestication in
culture, involving artificial selection, relaxed natural selection and genetic drift.
They differ phenotypically in behaviour, physiology and morphology. They
also differ in their learning opportunities especially in relation to feeding and
anti-predator behaviour.
 
www.fisheriesireland.ie/.../brown-trout-genetics-and-fisheries-manageme.

I just found this to be interesting reading. I did a search on wild brown trout gentics. The last paragraph was copied from this site.
 
"there is NOT one single population of wild trout that exists in our great state worth intentionally degrading for the benefit of any fisherman or any amount of money no matter how small the population." Well put Steno!

The idea of "genetic pollution" is right on if the pelletheads reproduce with the wild population.

I also agree with the fisheries specific genetics. As well as your last paragraph as to what's wrong with pelletheads.

 
Steno - your post is probably THE best post I have read ever on this board. The whole post is great but one sentence is 1 million percent true.

"Wild trout through generations will develop unique characteristics to the individual watershed. In many cases becoming irreplaceable with any stocked trout from any hatchery."

That is spot on!
 
Something I think is important that I didn't mention.
From a management point of view stocking trout over wild confuses many issues. By artificially propping up the population makes identifying that there may be a problem in the wild trout harder to acknowledge, identify and diagnose. What is a strong population today may not be tomorrow and the above mentioned is a recipe for disaster.
Can anyone place a value on heritage strain genetic Brook trout of the Big Springs?

Thanks Brown71 and BrookieChaser. It felt good to tell that story, it was thirty years ago and a hard lesson learned in many respects.
 
Sbecker – I like your #30 post in this thread. “They have been stocked Class A waters for a very long time and continue to be Class A waters”. Thanks for saying stocked trout are not so detrimental to wild trout.

BrookieChaser, Stenonema, and Brown71,
Please tell me you guys realize that the PFBC stocked brown trout pelletheads in our streams from as far back as roughly 1890. Congratulations Stenonema for catching one of those big stocked descendants when you were 13. It cracks me up, however, when we put this prestige upon wild trout only to realize the only reason they are in our streams in the first place is because the PFBC stocked them years ago.
 
Yea dude Im not against stocking. Just thought a lot of that post was spot on.

That being said, there are places that are better off not stocked, and places that definitely benefit from stocking. Too many places/variables for me to even get into that argument.

Strains of wild trout though have definitely evolved to their specific watersheds. Ma nature is stronger than most want to believe.

In fact, there is a lot of common trout "belief" that I just flat don't subscribe to. Two big ones being - number one, the belief that trout can't survive in what is thought to be too warm of water. Obviously, good water is a plus, but I know quite a few places where trout and big ones at that survive in places that most say "too warm for trout". Browns especially.

Second, a lot of streams have WAY more spawning than the average joe realizes. Stocked or unstocked. Take a walk up a trib to your local stream sometime after a rain in mid - late November. You'll probably be surprised.
 
Most of the streams on the list being discussed in the OP are limestone streams, with one tailwater.

On other limestone streams in PA, when the management has been changed from stocking + "general" regs to no stocking + restrictive harvest regs, the result has been LARGE increases in brown trout populations.

Increases of 10 or 15 or 20% could be explained away as natural variability or sampling variation.

But when increases are 100% (doubling) and even 200% (tripling), those arguments vanish.
 
fishfuzz, I could hardly detect the sarcasm. However don't be fooled to think the brown trout in the hatcheries today are anything like the ones first placed into our streams many years ago.
 
fishfuzz wrote:
Sbecker – I like your #30 post in this thread. “They have been stocked Class A waters for a very long time and continue to be Class A waters”. Thanks for saying stocked trout are not so detrimental to wild trout.

BrookieChaser, Stenonema, and Brown71,
Please tell me you guys realize that the PFBC stocked brown trout pelletheads in our streams from as far back as roughly 1890. Congratulations Stenonema for catching one of those big stocked descendants when you were 13. It cracks me up, however, when we put this prestige upon wild trout only to realize the only reason they are in our streams in the first place is because the PFBC stocked them years ago.
Click to expand...

A stream with 50 kg/ha is Class A.

A stream with 150 kg/ha is also Class A. So is a stream with 300 kg/ha.

Are they all the same? Obviously not.

Why settle for a continually suppressed mediocre brown trout population, when you could have a trout population far higher?

It's not about "prestige." It's about trout populations.

These streams have the potential to support much higher populations than they presently do. We don't have to guess about this, we know from the experience on many similar streams.

Operation Future has been going on now since about 1980, i.e. about 33 years. The results are in.
 
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