"The goal of the WBTEP was simply to shut the traps of the folks at PATrout who have been blabbering for years that harvest and cropping of wild brook trout is the reason for the brook trout being so small in these small freestone systems."
Interesting, but it may not work
After fishing several brookie streams that are probably too small and/or too remote to see much fishing pressure, I think that habitat and hunger, not harvest, are the reasons for the small size of PA mountain freestone brookies. I have even gotten permission to fish a few streams that are heavily posted and remote (1.5 mi from a road), still the fish size is pretty much the same.
Brookies are sometimes the only fish in these highly infertile streams -- there may be no bait fish because their mouths arent big enough for terrestrials. Seems easy to believe that it is infertility not fishing pressure that keeps the fish small. Unless it is mountain lions
C'est la vie, it's fun to fish with a two weight and dries. And you
gotta love fish that will hit dry flies in 35F water... but that fits with the infertility idea, too.
Not that it really matters, but I dont expect the low level of fisihing pressure on these streams will increase... I say that in part because of the reaction of people here to ultralight fly gear, which makes catching small fish more fun "it'll kill the fish," "you cant really cast a 2 weight," etc...........
