Exceptionally well written piece on wild vs. stocked trout

[tomitrout]

For the sake of argument, how do you tell a wild brookie from a native brookie? Some water I fish surely has both.

Bonk it & grill it....the one with sweet pink flesh is wild, the pale mushy one is stocked.

 

[pcray1231]

For the sake of argument, how do you tell a wild brookie from a native brookie? Some water I fish surely has both.

For the sake of argument, I would answer:

- All brookies are "native". Wild or stocked. A species is what's native or non-native. Since the species is brook trout, all brook trout are native.

- Strain is a different matter. You have "heritage" strains, each native to an individual basin. You have the hatchery strain, which itself is probably a mutt of various heritage strains from all over the eastern US, selectively bred over many years in hatcheries for traits which help them survive hatcheries.

And likely most of PA's wild brookie populations are mutts, but primarily mutts of LOCAL heritage strains. There may be some influence from hatchery strains, the extent of which is TBD.

- Wild vs. stocked. All native. But adding stockies to existing wild brook trout populations stands to harm the sustainability of those population in several manners.

1. Increasing angler pressure, and harvest.
2. Direct competition for food and holding lies with existing populations, thus replacing wild fish. While being less likely to successfully reproduce than the fish they replace.
3. Potential genetic contribution to the wild populations, adding traits to the gene pool that may be helpful in a hatchery but are harmful in a stream environment.

 

[ryansheehan]

tomitrout wrote:

For the sake of argument, how do you tell a wild brookie from a native brookie? Some water I fish surely has both.

Bonk it & grill it....the one with sweet pink flesh is wild, the pale mushy one is stocked.

Just made my day! That's an awesome response.

 

[ryansheehan]

wildtrout2 wrote:
Those look like holdovers that have been in that stream for some time. They'll get color over time. I was referring to freshly stocked trout.

I'm pretty sure those fish had been stocked within a week or so of me catching them. The fins were still pretty chewed up and had not recovered. They had just put alot of fish into pine creek where I fished for a day while visiting the in laws in the area.

 

[Char_Master]

pcray1231 wrote:
Suggest, yes, prove, no.

If it's a temperature tweener, it may stay cold enough in some years to have fish holdover through a summer. But not in others, hence, no wild population will establish if it gets wiped out every couple of years when we get a warm, dry summer.

A more common situation is a stream that has everything a fish needs, but not everything an egg needs. i.e. lacks spawning gravel. These are often the places fingerling stockings make sense.

That's been my experience on my local creek. Last year the summer started out very cool and wet so creeks were always high with water and often not much over 70-72°F (keep in mind, this is a stream flowing through Pittsburgh suburbs so it's not the pristine 52-58°F wild Brookie streams we all love that stay cool year round). The trout can't reproduce primarily because of large amounts of siltation and high catch-and-rope angler pressure, and acid mine drainage to an extent but this creek is in much better conditions in terms of mine drainage than other Pittsburgh area creeks. This year I'm not so sure we're going to get holdovers as last night the water level was several feet below average and the water temperature was 76°F (just got stocked Tuesday!). It was so warm, in fact, that I was getting clumps of algae stuck on a streamer every time I stripped it in! I've already started tying up Smallmouth streamers and White Sucker nymphs in preparation for a large trout die off within the next week or so. So my point with all that rambling is that some Junes you'll get 70° high, fast flowing suburban streams and other times you'll get 76° extremely low trickles in the end of April, it all depends on the weather.

 

[steveo27]

Char_Master wrote:

That's been my experience on my local creek.

Mind sharing the stream name? I was out last night on a local PGH stream and it was just a hair lower than it normally is and the water was still very cold.

 

[Char_Master]

steveo27 wrote:

Char_Master wrote:

That's been my experience on my local creek.

Mind sharing the stream name? I was out last night on a local PGH stream and it was just a hair lower than it normally is and the water was still very cold.

Pine Creek

 

[krayfish2]

One one of the streams I fish the algae can be quite an issue and make it unfishable at times. The problem arises early in the season (April and May). The condition happens when the spring provides low / clear flows with lots of sunshine. The bloom happens quickly in spite of water temps hovering in the high 40's to low 50's. Some algae blooms aren't tied into temps. Also, if your thermometer has registered a temp of 76 in mid April, the stream is very small, low gradient and low flow.....or you own a broken thermometer

 

[Reeder]

Go on up to Slate run the next time they stock big browns. You will find plenty of red on stocked fish, in the bucket, before they even hit the water. I have seen orange on wild trout as well. It is fairly common on a couple of the smaller streams I fish. I have even caught a few that have orange and red. Imagine that. Genetics and diet affect color. Bias towards location of birth...not so much.

 

[KenU]

A very fine article and I enjoyed it a lot. But, I do have one bone to pick. That is this statement: "I will say that I’m thankful for the introduced brown trout to this state, for without them, we would have vast stretches of troutless, prime water that is simply too warm in the summers for our Pennsylvania native brookie."

I strongly suspect that there aren't many prime Pennsylvania streams with thriving brown trout populations that would not hold thriving native brook trout populations if the brown trout were not there. Brown trout are not coldwater carp. The difference in temperature tolerance between the two species is less than 2 degrees F.

Brown trout simply have characteristics that allow them to dominate our limestoners and more fertile waters, which are very similar to the streams in Europe where they evolved. There are probably lots of factors like vulnerability to angling pressure and disease that brown trout possess that likely helped them to take over many of our streams. They would have a slight advantage in warmer water, but not much. Take Fishing Creek: It has plenty of cold water and yet the brown trout almost completely dominate it. Only a fraction of the population is made up of brook trout.

 

[pcray1231]

Agreed.

The author had that one backwards. It's not that browns inhabit waters that brookies can't thrive in.

The other way around. Brookies dominate waters in which browns can't thrive in. The most common situation being pH/alkalinity dependent, as brookies handle acidic water better than browns. Hence, the major holdout for brookies is headwater sections where it's typically on the more acidic side.

 

[KenU]

pcray: Yes, but the trouble is that streams where brookies dominate are sterile and small. Some of our freestones with higher alkalinity do hold brown/brookie mixes and on occasion produce a few bigger browns which get big by eating the more plentiful brookies.

 

[jifigz]

I think to advocate for the killing of wild trout in PA because they aren't brook trout is silly. We have lots of wild trout thanks to the browns being here and better/improving water quality. Brown trout are much more suited to thriving with our current environmental state. I don't think that the capabilities of bringing widespread wild brook trout back to larger streams throughout the state is a long way off so we should embrace what we have. And what we have us pretty good compared to the not so distant past.

 

[PhilC]

Reeder wrote:
Go on up to Slate run the next time they stock big browns. You will find plenty of red on stocked fish, in the bucket, before they even hit the water. I have seen orange on wild trout as well. It is fairly common on a couple of the smaller streams I fish. I have even caught a few that have orange and red. Imagine that. Genetics and diet affect color. Bias towards location of birth...not so much.

I'm sure there's anecdotal exceptions but I agree with:
-orange = hold over
-red = wild

I have never seen a wild brown with orange spots...if you have pics please share.

 

[PhilC]

pcray1231 wrote:
Agreed.

The author had that one backwards. It's not that browns inhabit waters that brookies can't thrive in.

The other way around. Brookies dominate waters in which browns can't thrive in. The most common situation being pH/alkalinity dependent, as brookies handle acidic water better than browns. Hence, the major holdout for brookies is headwater sections where it's typically on the more acidic side.

Browns dominate waters that both can thrive in.
And Browns also dominate where brookies can't thrive.

 

[Reeder]

here are a few

 

[Reeder]

there are plenty of fresh stockies with orange straight out of the bucket as well.

 

[benner]

Enjoyable read, agree with just about everything he mentioned.

 

[renglehardt]

Good morning
I think there is a big misconception
regarding the wild Browns. I help with stocking programs
for a local sportsman club and one day we were stocking a section of
Penns and there was a fly fisherman in the hole and i said
here you here is a bucket of fish for you and his reply was i don't fish for stockies only natives. Sorry bud your in the mid section of Penns 9 out of 10 fish you catch are stocked fish. They promote it as a wild trout stream to make it appealing for people where in reality most of the fish caught were stocked at some point in their life

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Totally disagree with you on that one.

Obviously the wild Browns in Penns aren't native but the "majority" were not stocked at some point in their lives. That creek has over 2000 streambred fish per mile. The majority of fish caught in Penns are wild.