Brown Trout Eradication.

[FarmerDave]

Eccles wrote:

If you can't find another way PM me with an email address and I can send you the paper as a .pdf

I appreciate that, and will take you up on it if I can't get to it. But I will likely be able to get to it once I am out from behind the company firewall.

 

[PocketWater]

wildtrout2 wrote:
There's an informative, although fairly short, article about the brook trout in Pa, called The True Natives, written by Ken Undercoffer. Just Google it, as I don't know how to post a link. lol

Tried Googling The True Natives....It is 'The Real Natives'.

http://www.patrout.org/docs/reference-materials/the_real_natives.pdf?sfvrsn=2

 

[wildtrout2]

Thanks for the correction PW.

 

[RLeep2]

>>There's an informative, although fairly short, article about the brook trout in Pa, called The True Natives, written by Ken Undercoffer. Just Google it, as I don't know how to post a link. lol>>

I'm pretty sure I published this online for Ken back in the late 90's when we first started up the PaTrout website.

So, it should be there somewhere. Lemme take a look..

Yup. It's a pdf: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiU762GsrvKAhXIND4KHZbwA8wQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.patrout.org%2Fdocs%2Freference-materials%2Fthe_real_natives.pdf%3Fsfvrsn%3D2&usg=AFQjCNG1__iwZJVhAQ8n7t3_ETlkj0GZBQ

 

[Char_Master]

This is a topic that I feel pretty strongly about. Theoretically, if it was possible to eliminate all brown trout (and rainbows) from streams in PA and bring back brook trout with population sizes that they once had, I'd be all for it no doubt. I dream of being able to fish the north central PA area back when it was first discovered when Kettle Creek was said to hold Brooks up to 18" in length. While that fishery is still great and I've caught 12" individuals from it, I theorize that Browns are part of the reason that fish of that tremendous size are no longer present. Do I love catching Browns, of course! Who doesn't? But I do feel that their presence is unnatural

Realistically, many of the streams that once held brook trout are no longer healthy enough to support them and if there is an open predatory niche that needs to be filled, brown trout may be the perfect solution in some cases (that is, until they get 30" and start trying to eat ducks LOL). However, I do believe that the streams that can and do still support native brooks should be protected as much as possible and Browns should not be stocked or present at all in these creeks.

While this is definitely a stream fishing oriented forum, I've had another similar discussion on some Great Lakes forums about the Lake Trout vs. Pacific Salmonids problem. This can locally be applied to Lake Erie where native Lake Trout are currently not able to reproduce due to poor water conditions and egg predation by gobies. Due to this, they must be stocked annually to ensure the population goes on. And while only 160,000 lake trout are being stocked yearly in the entire lake, a massive 1,000,000 steelhead are being stocked every year in PA alone. This is even more annoying as Steelhead show very little natural reproduction and the only reason they're being continually stocked is because Lake Trout don't run up the creeks to spawn in the fall where the majority of anglers can target them as Pacific Oncorhynchus sps do. But anyway, I'll stop rambling about Lake Trout (for now).

 

[Chaz]

Eccles wrote:
I think Chaz may need more help than that.

Chaz wrote:
...Hemlock Wooly Adelaide.

That would be the Australian version of the bug? Just arrived on these shores perhaps?

Spell checker didn't like adelgid. Or shading apparently.

 

[steveo27]

All this talk of eradicating wild browns and Im just over here trying to find streams in SWPA that hold fish-able populations of em.

 

[Chaz]

steveo27 wrote:
All this talk of eradicating wild browns and Im just over here trying to find streams in SWPA that hold fish-able populations of em.

Try the Laurel Highlands, and some of the spring creeks west of Bedford. There are streams the "lists" from that region that have browns.

 

[KenU]

I'm late getting in to this blog but I have at least one suggestion: Why not stock only sterilized (triploid) rainbows. I understand eggs are readily available. This would eliminate the chances that non-natives could reproduce and allow all you folks to know whether it was "stocked or wild." This would also enable the folks who survey streams more readily make the same determination.

 

[krayfish2]

That's a decent suggestion but I believe the argument will go back to displacing the native / wild fish. Stocked fish are used to living in crowded conditions which often forces wild fish to move to a lie that may be more dangerous for them or not as bountiful a food supply.

Stocking sterile fish over small wild fish populations may be of some benefit in areas receiving higher angler usage.

 

[moon1284]

I don't know much about triploid rainbows, but I think they eat a lot and get big and fat. This fish could probably do a lot of damage to the forage base of a stream.

 

[KenU]

Don't get me wrong, I feel that stocking over native trout populations is a travesty and should be stopped. But since we can't seem to get the PFBC to do so, the next best thing would be to only stock sterile rainbows. Brown trout are still advancing in some of PA's formerly purely brook trout waters. That would eliminate the possibility of establishing a competitive and wild population of either brown or rainbow trout. In some cases the PFBC is stocking rainbows because they can be easily identified. So far, rainbows have not been very successful at naturalizing in PA. Of course that has not been the case in the southern Appalachians.

 

[Char_Master]

Holy s*** that's a fat rainbow! I've caught some football steelhead but that thing just looks like a cube! Can't imagine how many shiners and darters one of those would eat, not to mention a creek full of them!

 

[PocketWater]

This article is a few years old, but I wonder if John Arway actually believes this....if he does, he may want to open his ears to what biologists have to say on the matter.

http://lancasteronline.com/sports/outdoors/the-value-of-stocked-trout/article_24a856a1-ea7b-576c-a68f-ce9cc0bc4b7b.html

According to John Arway, the agency's executive director, there is no push within the agency to favor wild trout over stockers.

"Wild trout don't compete with stocked trout and stocked trout don't compete with wild trout," he said.

 

[Hook_Jaw]

I like fishing for brookies in mountain streams but to me there's nothing like catching hog browns

 

[tomitrout]

According to John Arway, the agency's executive director, there is no push within the agency to favor wild trout over stockers.

"Wild trout don't compete with stocked trout and stocked trout don't compete with wild trout," he said.

It would be nice to know the full context of that quote....is he speaking of trout competing against each other in the stream or is he looking at it from a licensing or 'resource utilization' point of view where people fishing primarily for wild trout don't compete with folks who fish primarily for stockers....couple of ways to interpret that quote.

It's kinda like the winding down of the WBTE program when Fish & Boat stated that the catch & release regulations had no effect on the native brookies and lots of folks read that as F&B saying that the practice of C&R is not effective. Which isn't what F&B said, they said that regulated C&R had minimal effect on the fisheries because those that fish those waters already practice C&R, so with those streams it didn't really matter if they were protected by C&R regs or not since they're already being 'self-regulated.'

So, I think it'd be interesting to see Arway's quote in the full context that it was pulled from...imho.

 

[PocketWater]

No idea tomitrout. I just took it as a stand alone quote as that is how it is presented to us by the writer. You are correct though that context would clarify what he means.

 

[Sylvaneous]

Cornholio wrote:
Just out of curiosity how many people on here would support a Brown Trout eradication program in streams that historically and still could support Brook Trout?

Only on a couple streams that would have a great potential for exceptional brookie growth and a serious physical barrier to prevent brown trout re-entry.

It would also have to be a place where you don't just remove the browns and have a few more brookies. It would have to be a great brookie stream with plenty of fish 9-10 inches and better.

Syl