At extreme risk, lol. I'll try to spell out my own viewpoint.
I am for wild trout. Browns, brookies, rainbows. And on 95% of projects they aren't going to conflict. Now for the nuance. Yes, of those, brookies should recieve preference where it is feasible.
Feasible..... While I recognize that, for instance, the LJR, once held brookies, and who knows, one may turn up now and then even today. Browns have displaced them. They are the more aggressive, more dominant species in that particular environment. They won. I believe that any effort to eradicate the browns from the LJR is doomed to fail. You are going to ruin an absolutely fantastic wild trout resource, attempt to establish brookies, maybe even have a modicum of success in getting a few to grow. But while you do this it's gonna suck as a fishery, turn a whole lotta people against you for ruining their favorite river, and make you and your cause public enemy #1. And the moment you look away, browns are going to take it back over anyway. I am perfectly happy with saying the LJR, with wild browns in it, is a valuable resource I want to protect.
And substitute the LJR with, frankly, MOST wild brown streams in this fair state. In no way would I advocate any sort of mass statewide policy of taking out browns in efforts to restore brookies. Not because I don't see brookies as more important, I do. But I value the browns too, I don't think it'll work, and all you'll do is screw up an already good fishery failing to make a better one. It's like having a wonderful wife, and throwing her away to try for someone a little better, even though you know you won't succeed and you'll end up with nobody!
But take out the policy/fisherman in me and I do see brook trout as the conservation priority. We need to pay extra attention to protecting those headwater streams where brookies still thrive. That will have benefits downstream too. I agree that the PFBC should have some brook trout specific policies, if for no other reason than public awareness and education. In another thread I said 1. stop stocking over brookies and 2. make brookies C&R statewide. I would absolutely support that. It says nothing about removing browns, or don't pay attention to browns, or anything of the sort. And yes, in an ideal scenario, if it were feasible to replace a mixed population with brookies only, I think it should be done. Even if as an experiment. Upper Kettle was mentioned. I'm not talking about ending the stocking throughout the entire length of Kettle. I'm saying it has a barrier, Ole Bull. A fence on the fish ladder will do nicely. Above that barrier there are browns, and brookies, already battling it out. And plenty of interconnected tribs with brookies. That's an ideal place to run such a thing, to try to tip the scales in favor of the brookies. Shock out the browns, encourage their harvest, make brookies C&R. Advertise the crap out of it, show the public you are serious about protecting brook trout above all other. Restore this particular system for brookies, because it actually stands a chance of success.
But yes, I still believe our brown trout water is valuable and worthy of conservation efforts as well, and if anyone has a project to restore, enhance, or protect a wild brown trout stream, sign me up, I'm your ally. Nativists, I'm your ally too on most projects, I want to see brook trout succeed as well. And hell, I see value in stocked fisheries too. As much as I would LOVE to see lower Pine Creek, or Oil, or name any large warm waterway, restored to cold water. As much as the focus and goal should be on wild trout. Right now those are are not wild trout streams. They are still valuable. They SHOULD be stocked and provide a valuable resource. And project work/conservation efforts on those is fine as well. Did you see what improvements on Babb Creek did for Pine? OMG, yes, lets do more of that. Yeah, it enhanced a stocked fishery. It made things better. And maybe enough efforts like that Pine will turn more wild, that'd be great, but lets not diminish the gain that was already made on the stocked fishery.
You can't just separate conservation from fishing like that. Fishermen are your conservationists. Stocked fisheries, wild brown fisheries. Those are the gateways. They create conservationists. As a kid I yanked stocked fish out of the local stocked streams. Started searching out a better experience, went for float stocked type waters instead of bathtubs. Moved onto Spring and Penns and the like and was like, wow. Fished brookie streams and loved it. Got involved in all of the above. And now I have kids. And I take them to the smaller local stocked streams, where I started, because a 4 foot tall 7 year old isn't going to walk 3 miles into a stream, or handle wading the Lehigh or Penns Creek, or have the attention span to wait for the evening hatch. You gotta start somewhere. I have even taken him to pay ponds, because it's fun and gets him into it, but you know when he catches a 7 inch native, I go nuts and explain to him how this is a better trophy than that 20 inch bow he caught in that fee pond. You can educate. Our policies should focus on educating more than they do. You can tell the public, our policies show a clear preference for native brook trout over wild browns, wild browns over stocked anything, and where none of the above is currently feasible, we still value having a stocked fishery over no fishery at all. That's our priority hierarchy and what will lead our policy. Each stream is different. And the way we manage is we look at every stream, we take that priority hierarchy, and determine what the highest form that stream is currently capable of, and we shoot for that. That's what I'm for.
dftu.org
