Wulff-Man wrote:
But I kind of agree with whoever said that this may be something like Exxon doing global warming studies.
That was me that made the comparison to an Exxon global warming study. I hope our friend Mike didn't take offense at my remark, it was just an observation. I really appreciate his contributions to this site, he adds credibility and perspective for us armatures. But I can't help but think that even among professional biologists there is sometimes disagreement about interpretations of data. It happens in nearly all forms of science.
For my 2 cents, I think the wild trout survey was fairly well done, especially when compared to the stocked trout survey. In the former, they surveyed a couple hundred streams, repeatedly, over the entire season. The later, just 30 streams, mostly on opening weekend.
The problem with the wild trout survey was the streams were so diverse and sometimes remote, they needed two people working overtime, in shifts, just to walk some of them twice a day. Some of these poor folks went weeks without seeing a fisherman. And even when they saw one, odds were they couldn't catch him to poll. In all that time, they managed to interview only about 200 anglers. There's no doubt in my mind however, that the easily accessible wild trout streams get hammered while the more remote streams seldom see more then a couple anglers a week. On average, it doesn't look like harvest is a problem. Kind of like wading in an ice cold stream on a hot summer day - your head is burning and your feet are freezing, but it averages out.
Compared to the wild trout survey, getting a statistically significant sample was a piece of cake in the stocked trout survey. In fact, they had to assign several people to a stream because it was not possible for an individual to poll everybody in an eight hour day. Too many anglers. But Tom Gamber quoted an interesting fact from the stocked trout survey: half the streams also contained wild trout. They didn't keep count of wild ones, but even if its a small percentage of the estimated 2.5 million trout harvested, it surely would impact a breading population.
Trout fishing in PA could be better with more restrictive harvest regulation if only on wild streams close to the road and stocked streams that support wild populations.