Brook Trout Restoration in PA

[sixfootfenwick]

Brook Trout Restoration in PA?
Where?

 

[wildtrout2]

Here we go again!!!!

Why not???

 

[CRB]

I would advocate for more buffering of streams with the federal energy policy limiting greenhouse gases there will be less money available for coal mine remediation which will probably take more priority over stream buffering.

 

[troutbert]

...the PFBC study of unstocked Class A BT and ST streams in which biomass of age 1 and older wild trout was less than Class A during the concurrent preseason stocking period and well above Class A in summer, primarily due to seasonal shifts in adult trout densities. Noteworthy is that this Class A biomass shift study occurred during the old statewide opening day time period, prior to the regional opening day program, so it was even later in the early spring period that lower biomasses of wild trout were identified as being present in spring than in summer.

If for behavioral reasons substantial numbers of adult wild trout within stocked sections are also not present or not available in a given section of stocked trout water during the now earlier, colder water, opening weeks, they’re not going to be harvested.

Mike, could you explain this? It sounds like you are talking about seasonal brook trout movement. Could you give a summary of it? Where do brook trout move to and from, and when, and why?

 

[Mike]

I suspect that spawning movements, often upstream, and post spawning movements, often reported as being downstream for a segment of the ST adult population, are somewhere between part of it and a major part of it, at least for ST, although the same general results were seen for BT. It doesn’t explain, however, how this also occurred in Segloch’s nearly 100% ST population at the time given that there was a downstream dam, unless that dam was undercut such that fish could get through.

The other possibility relates to observations or other documentation from elsewhere (I forget which) by former head of the Cooperative F&W Research Unit at PSU, Robert Butler, who had a strong interest in ST behavior and had done such research at the instream observational lab on Sachen Creek Ca. What he described in his PSU graduate level fish behavioral ecology course was ST entering stream gravel under certain conditions and (my notation) obviously where gravel consolidation by fines didn’t prevent it. I don’t recall if he observed this at Sachen Ck or if it was only observed and reported by others in a natural gravel bottom hatchery raceway-like situation where a very small known number (easily countable via direct observation) of ST varied due to disappearance into the gravel and reappearance later.

One could also tack on to the sum of the reasons why biomass varied the fact that trout don’t respond quite as well to electrofishing in very cold water. I would not consider this to have been a major factor, but still it would have been a contributing factor to the observed differences.

What my comments here and earlier suggest is that there may be and likely is quite a lot of variability in exposure to harvest impacts by legal wild ST in stocked streams depending upon stocking timing, stocking frequency, and whether downstream or upstream areas to which some adult ST have migrated in the fall or early winter are fished very heavily. Examples of why this would vary would be the absence of stocking in upstream or downstream areas, posting in those areas or other access limiting factors, rhododendron tunnels upstream or downstream, and downstream movement into much larger receiving streams where there’s either no stocking or early season flows limit access or catch.

It would be interesting to determine whether there has been or will be a decreased cropping of wild ST from stocked stream sections as a by-product of the earlier opening day, particularly in stream sections that only receive a preseason stocking and no inseason stockings. Of course, with cooperation of the powers that be, a potentially related study could be designed if there was a desire to maintain a limited preseason stocking program but a willingness to give up on the inseason program, including by cooperative nurseries, for purposes of an experiment. I can tell you this; it didn’t seem to work on Cold Run when I tried it years ago because, as I recall, natural variations in reproductive success and adult abundance appeared to mask any substantial impacts associated with stocking reductions. I would not claim that as a general result if more streams were studied because I’m only speaking about that one attempt, aimed in that case to push the population into that Class A category (and thus eliminate stocking) and it was prior to the time period when the the early regional opening day was established.

 

[Mike]

gaslight much? We are in the Conservation forum... I understand the frustration when these discussions bleed out into every thread even mentioning bows or browns, but I think this is exactly where the discussion belongs. 🤷‍♂️


So Mike, what is the best avenue for the concerned public to advocate for this approach?

Contact your Commissioner. If you really do live in Mountaintop, he would be the Commissioner for NE Pa. Feel free to mention any part of that approach that you liked and not include anything that you didn’t like. If it stimulated some new thoughts about approaches to deal with the issue of stocking over wild ST, then that’s good. It seems to be a reasonable compromise that might get the ball rolling to some degree for less stocking over a segment of Pa’s wild ST populations.

 

[Dbrown143]

For the most part, a lack of a seed population is not an issue in the state. I'm sure there's a handful of examples where it is. But by and large most watersheds have brookies in various feeders and when the habitat is there, so are the brookies. As such aside from a few examples transplanting isn't gonna do a lot in the long run.

The biggest issues facing brookies are development (as forested streams get developed the streams get silty and warmer), and acid remediation. I think work is being done on those issues. The other big issue is brown trout, which have a token presence just about everywhere and when habitat allows tend to take over brookie populations. The only solution there is removal of browns. And thats a very, very taboo subject. I'd support an isolated example project, say above a dam or something, just to get the fishing public aware that brookies can be good sized in bigger, interconnected waters where they can migrate in and out of feeders without competition. Kettle above Ole Bull has been mentioned and seems a good candidate. But overall, in highly connected streams, I think its impossible to get rid of all the browns without ruining the fishery, so ongoing maintenance would be needed to keep browns at bay, and I think you are more likely to harm a popular brown trout fishery than to create a popular brookie fishery, which isn't gonna go over well.

See little sandy creek in venango county Pennsylvania. You DO NOT want anyone to try to get rid of the Browns in favor of brookies, trust me. That’s your isolated example.

 

[Cznymph]

Contact your Commissioner. If you really do live in Mountaintop, he would be the Commissioner for NE Pa. Feel free to mention any part of that approach that you liked and not include anything that you didn’t like. If it stimulated some new thoughts about approaches to deal with the issue of stocking over wild ST, then that’s good. It seems to be a reasonable compromise that might get the ball rolling to some degree for less stocking over a segment of Pa’s wild ST populations.

How does one contact their commissioner? They don’t make the commissioners information available to the public?