Chaz
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2006
- Messages
- 8,470
I'm going to stick my neck out here and say it has nothing to do with high stream temperatures, as to why browns have spread in PA and why rainbows haven't. It is a natural selection thing. Flows in our streams and rivers in PA tend to favor fall spawning fish as opposed to spring spawning fish. Now because rainbows have been selected for fall spawning because fisheries managers want them bigger when they are stocked rainbows are starting to pop up where they haven't previously.
It's a bad situation, if the fisheries managers had to submit an environmental impact statement before stocking fish they'd be in trouble, because they couldn’t say there is no impact, everyone knows what at least some of the impacts are. Stocked fish eat native species and can decimate populations of native fish and other prey species to the point that the native species become extinct.
If someone had the foresight to study the potential impact of stocking invasive species before they were stocked we might not have the mess we have now. But that was over one hundred years ago. We'll never go back because there is no one willing to say stop the madness.
It's a bad situation, if the fisheries managers had to submit an environmental impact statement before stocking fish they'd be in trouble, because they couldn’t say there is no impact, everyone knows what at least some of the impacts are. Stocked fish eat native species and can decimate populations of native fish and other prey species to the point that the native species become extinct.
If someone had the foresight to study the potential impact of stocking invasive species before they were stocked we might not have the mess we have now. But that was over one hundred years ago. We'll never go back because there is no one willing to say stop the madness.
