Maryland's Trout Program Woes

"Maryland's government sucks, in almost every way possible"

Easy there... A lot of good people work in MD government, and we have taken many positive steps. The work that they have done out west with protecting the natives has been amazing, and like PA, I think many of our stocking issues are rooted in outdated tradition. I.E. Big Hunting Creek. I know beaver creek's stocking issue is centered on access, as the people, who own the property in the upper stretch have threatened to post if the section is not stocked. I'd prefer they discontinue stocking that and let them post to provide the wild Browns some refuge to spawn up there, but license sales dictate otherwise. Sounds like a familiar PA problem.
 
I've talked to several PA flyfishers who drive to MD and buy the license, in order to fish for native brook trout there.

 
Blauner - yup that section IS the prettiest section of water on the Branch in my opinion. Love fishing it.
 
I often take my bike and ride down from the blue hole, doesn't get nearly the pressure as the upper catch and release.
 
The fellow who said salt water is Maryland's bread and butter was spot on. Trout is at best a fourth priority after Chesapeake, Atlantic, and black bass.
That said, for many years Maryland was blessed with some very dedicated trout biologists who parlayed their limited resources into some fairly extraordinary wild trout fishing opportunities. Essentially they were able to plant the wild strain of browns that took hold in Jones Falls into streams across the state's northern tier from Cecil County (believe it or not) over to Frederick and Washington counties and beyond. The argument is sometimes made that the wild browns supplanted native wild brook trout, but in many cases the brook trout were already gone. Moreover, you can still catch wild brook trout in some tributaries to Big Gunpowder Falls and Western Run.
I haven't been tuned into the state of affairs at DNR and the fisheries division for several years, but I fear the decision a few years back to feed fishing license money into the general fund could end up screwing the trout program into the ground.
And this whole mess with the Beaver Creek hatchery and its spring just chaps my rear end. There has to be a reason behind the spring having begun to fail. Usually such things are the result of wells or someone pumping large amounts of ground water. Look at a map and it is easy to identify several potential users of large amounts of groundwater.
No doubt things will improve when the few regulations in place designed to protect streams are eliminated to make it easier for other folks to make a buck.
 
I started fishing Garrett county in the early 90's. I believe Bob Bachman was in an upper fisheries management position, and he had Ken Pavol in some type on fisheries/biologist position. There was a local "politico-type named Gary something. What a team. They knew what they had in the Casselman, Savage and Yough and they advocated hard for them, working those back-channels that get things done behind closed doors.

The upper Yough was stocked with a strain of warm-water tolerant rainbow fingerlings that could take the 80-plus degree summer water temps. Guide services were up and running locally. And there was a significant wild/resident brown population that was recognized and protected with year-round C and R above Sang Run clear to the power plant. Cold water releases held to predictable release schedule that out-of-town FF'ers could make the long trip and know that flood water levels wouldn't show-up suddenly and wash them out of their waders.

Those rivers were bug factories; the hatch list was a litany of species. I remember spinner falls amid blanket rises like the old time sulphur flights on the L. J and Spring creek, only without the crowds.

It wasn't perfect but it was close enough for me.

Then Bachman and Pavol retired. Gary smoked his last cigar and left to fish those rivers around the far bend. Some of us fought for a while but eventually realized it was a lost cause and went elsewhere. It's all now just a sad tribute to what was and could maybe still be again with the right people over-seeing things.

What galls is that the higher ups think we don't see. Don't know. Don't remember. Don't understand what failures they are as hacks put in charge of what was once such a unique treasure in a part of the country that probably had no right to expect to have what was once here.
 
BillPress wrote:
I started fishing Garrett county in the early 90's. I believe Bob Bachman was in an upper fisheries management position, and he had Ken Pavol in some type on fisheries/biologist position. There was a local "politico-type named Gary something. What a team. They knew what they had in the Casselman, Savage and Yough and they advocated hard for them, working those back-channels that get things done behind closed doors.

The upper Yough was stocked with a strain of warm-water tolerant rainbow fingerlings that could take the 80-plus degree summer water temps. Guide services were up and running locally. And there was a significant wild/resident brown population that was recognized and protected with year-round C and R above Sang Run clear to the power plant. Cold water releases held to predictable release schedule that out-of-town FF'ers could make the long trip and know that flood water levels wouldn't show-up suddenly and wash them out of their waders.

Those rivers were bug factories; the hatch list was a litany of species. I remember spinner falls amid blanket rises like the old time sulphur flights on the L. J and Spring creek, only without the crowds.

It wasn't perfect but it was close enough for me.

Then Bachman and Pavol retired. Gary smoked his last cigar and left to fish those rivers around the far bend. Some of us fought for a while but eventually realized it was a lost cause and went elsewhere. It's all now just a sad tribute to what was and could maybe still be again with the right people over-seeing things.

What galls is that the higher ups think we don't see. Don't know. Don't remember. Don't understand what failures they are as hacks put in charge of what was once such a unique treasure in a part of the country that probably had no right to expect to have what was once here.
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Casselman? It's a delayed harvest fishery with zero reproduction. Most years every trout is gone by August 1. It's nice don't get me wrong but mostly because it keeps people away from where I want to fish.
The savage is as good now as it has ever been. The upper yough is still a great fishery with unreal hatches, I'm just not sure where the decline is. You can bash the folks at DNR if you want, but over stocked fish? I don't understand that last sentence, western Maryland is as much a treasure as it ever was.
 
My Western Maryland Opinion

The Yough in MD must have been something at one time. I know a couple guys who aren't bullshitters that claim it used to be an unreal fishery and you could catch fish all day there. Every time they would talk about it I would just shake my head in disbelief and ask if we were talking about the same place because it hasn't shown me much in the last five years of sporadic trips. Outside of a heavy population of mutant rainbows near the mouth of the dam and an annual picture on the internet of a monster brown caught, I don't hear much about it in a positive manor. I even heard recently there were rumors about them stopping the cold water releases.

Very hard river to navigate, I guess I can't fairly judge it unless someone wanted to float me through it. But I'll probably never fish it again.

X2 on Sheehan's Cassleman assessment - Its only purpose is to keep people off the other rivers/streams. Great Delayed Harvest river though - I think it is the poster child for what a delayed harvest river should be.

The Savage is an awesome fishery but its pressured to hard for its size. Those fish take a beating and the last 2-3 years the hatches have really been sub-par, I don't know if its the Didymo or the whitewater release timings, but its to the point where I leave the Savage during the late afternoon to fish somewhere else during the evening. I haven't seen a good evening hatch and rise of fish on the Savage in a loooong time.
I don't even know if the sulphurs came off last year, if they did I completely missed them. I usually foam at the mouth the last week of May and first of June to fish the Savage but they just weren't there last year.

The North Branch is getting good and if they managed it just a little better (they being WV and MD) it would be awesome. But I love that place, its improving every year or maybe I'm just figuring it out better...

Brookie fishing is legit in MD, the only downfall with catch and release though is that some of those tribs have so many fish in them the average size is decreasing since they slapped the C and R regs on them a few years back. But you want to see polluted streams of brookies, go to MD.

Never fished the Gunpowder or the others like Big Hunting, maybe I'll put that one on the bucket list in the next couple of years.
 
He's talking about the Maryland yough, above the reservoir. The PA yough is a great fishery but it is tough, you either need low flows or a drift boat. There are some monsters in there. Don't drive past the savage and north branch to get to the gunpowder or big hunting.
 
So they took the allocated fishing and hunting money and deposited into the general fund. They get away with this because the number of voting sportsmen isn't enough to vote them out of office. Want to bet Cummings grabbed these monies for his failing district.
 
I have fished for trout in Maryland for 40 years and there used to be great wild brown trout fishing in Gunpowder Watershed in all the tributaries and the river. We even had wild brook trout in a number of them. Today there is only one tiny trib that has them. The size and numbers of brown trout in the entire area has dropped off dramatically in the last ten years. CR streams like Morgan's run get very little protection like the Gunpowder. Yeah we have some decent trout resources in Western Maryland, but most are crowded and not what they used to be when there was more active and effective management and enforcement.

I recent saw the DNR stock some of the local rivers and the fish were skinny 4-6' fish with one or two 8 inchers. I also looked at the DNR website and they had some very small kid holding up some little skinny trout. If they were adults the fish would have looked like trout minnies.

Maryland's last trout hatchery is failing and they don't have the resources or a location with good source water to do anything about it. Without a new water source and hatchery they won't even be able to raise decent fish for the Western Rivers, and withe little to no enforcement the wild stocks will continue to diminish.

That is were Maryland is right now. Maryland is more into being a sanctuary state than doing anything for their citizens and the DNR is a shadow of what is used to be.

With reforestation and tough zoning and housing requirements there are new opportunities to establish trout fisheries, but Maryland can't even protect the ones they have.
 
LongWader wrote:
I have fished for trout in Maryland for 40 years and there used to be great wild brown trout fishing in Gunpowder Watershed in all the tributaries and the river. We even had wild brook trout in a number of them. Today there is only one tiny trib that has them. The size and numbers of brown trout in the entire area has dropped off dramatically in the last ten years. CR streams like Morgan's run get very little protection like the Gunpowder. Yeah we have some decent trout resources in Western Maryland, but most are crowded and not what they used to be when there was more active and effective management and enforcement.
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If the wild trout populations have decreased dramatically, it's unlikely that the reason is less effective law enforcement and resulting poaching.

I think that can make some difference, but if the conditions are right in the streams for wild brown trout, they will be there.

If wild brown populations have really decreased substantially, the reason is probably some decline in the streams, i.e. in physical habitat, water quality, or water quantity.

 
There's still great wild brown trout fishing in the Gunpowder. The size may not be what you see in western Maryland, but it never has been over the last 23 years that I've been fishing it. I'm over 40 trout for the year there across six trips, and several of those trips were quite short (an hour or so) because I was cold.

DNR does electro-shocking surveys each year. The wild trout population has stable for decades (and quite high).
 
It is all relative folks. Still fairly good numbers of little fish in the Gunpowder, but not the numbers and quality there used to be.

I practically live on the river and am aware of several large poaching groups. The canoeists and kayakers removing the snags, brush piles, and dead falls has also been a factor.

The other problem is since the recession the fishing pressure and numbers of folks who take fish has intensified on all the rivers and streams. Local blogs and fly shops extolling the virtues of the resources have not helped either. While Fly Fishers are not the problem the other folks the notoriety attracts are.

I have been fishing the Gunpowder for 40 years I have not had my fishing license check even once. I have personally talked to a number of DNR folks about the poaching and they tell me there is little they can do or don't respond at all.

The numbers of trout in the 3-10" range is still good, but the larger and medium size fish are pretty much gone. If you fish the river regularly you know that you have to get a mile or more from the access areas to find decent fishing unless you go in the dead of Winter. There is a reason for that.

Holes that used to produce on a regular basis are empty and if you want to be consistently successful you are looking for more remote sections or pocket water most folks bypass.

When my wife and I first started fishing the upper river we had days where we consistently caught over 20 fish in a half day and some where in the 17" and 18' range. Those days are long gone. I still see a few larger trout in the lower Put and Take section, but they have become rare. I have fished the Gunpowder from Prettyboy Dam to Phoenix road for many years so my prospective is probably different from most folks.
 
I still have many days on the gp where I lose track of the number of fish in an hour. It has never been a big fish river. There has never ever been a problem of too few fish. I've never seen a poacher in over a thousand days on the gp. A 10 inch trout is not a small fish for that system, again its not a big fish river, never was. That being said I caught more big fish(over 15)last fall and winter. I got one that was 18 inches. Not sure what to think of your third paragraph other than wow. I've never understood the "good ol days"attitude, other than didymo.
 
L
When my wife and I first started fishing the upper river we had days where we consistently caught over 20 fish in a half day and some where in the 17" and 18' range.
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I had six days last year when I caught over 20 trout in the upper Gunpowder. (Didn't fish more than 4 hours once.) The best day was 35. I've two days in the last five years that were over 40. I had at least a dozen more afternoons last year when I caught 15 or so. Many of those days were in heavily fished sections of the river.

I caught ten today in 3 hours, but that's only because I missed/ldr'd several times that number.

I've been fishing the river since 1993 and haven't seen any decline in numbers at all. In fact, I can't think of better river for numbers of wild browns.
 
The poaching is mostly done by kayakers with small telescoping spinning rods and bait. They take the fish in the CR area and take out in the Put and Take area. I ran into a bunch of them at a local REI shop when I was looking at kayaks and they offered to help. When they found out I was a fisher they told me in hushed tones they had over 20 friends that used the Gunpowder CR area as their personal grocery store all the time. I played dumb and they shared their techniques and told me if I saw another fisher just hide the fishing rod and take off down stream. I also know of the number of landowners that use their access to the river to basically fill the freezers up on a regular basis. They told me that all their neighbors do the same. There is an occasional poacher on foot from a parking area, but they are rare because they have to carry the fish out in front of other fisherman who will harass them. If you call the poacher hot line the DNR will either have no one available and come too late.

Yep, lots of small fish, but if you think the GP never had good numbers of medium to large fish you are mistaken. Years ago we used to catch large numbers of them as they pushed upstream in the early Spring from their Wintering areas in the lower river to the to the Upper River. Once they dispersed it became more of a hunting game, but the brush piles, snags, and dead falls used to be a good place to find them. The wild browns in the GP love wood.

11 years ago I had a day in the wild trout 2 fish per day section where I caught 13 to 17" fish for hours as they moved in large groups up the river. I stopped fishing because I did not want to harass anymore of them. Those days are gone.

Some of those big trout used to spawn in some of the tributaries and they are gone as well.
 
So like the Savage, the Gunpowder used to have bigger fish...

What do they have in common?

- Increased pressure
- the Savage has an awful case of Didymo; does the Gunpowder?
- C & R regulations for the most part (the slot limit rarely gets used)
- the Savage used to be a stocked stream now it isn't; was the Gunpowder stocked the whole way through?

So basically saying "poachers are taking fish" is no way the issue for the average size decrease, if anything poachers taking a few fish should actually help the cause. Sounds to me like the Gun is overpopulated for the amount of food it produces and the type of food it produces (protein). I'm sure the Didymo isn't helping.
 
LongWader,

I concur.

30 years of fishing the system reflect the same experiences.

Maryland is quite inept and disinterested.
 
Apparently the spring water supply for that hatchery has been severely compromised with silt and it no longer yielding the water needed to raise the paltry 250,000 trout that Maryland provides for the entire state.
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It's not hard to draw a few conclusions when you look at the aerial and see what is upstream. I hope they are working with their neighbor to resolve the issue. I worry about beaver Creek. There are some beautiful wild browns down there. If the Hatchery is in trouble, I assume so is the rest of the fishery.
 

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