Does anyone want a real wild trout stamp?

[Fish Sticks]

Am I the only person who cringes and gets a little nauseated when I swipe my credit card for my license and trout stamp because I know the bulk of what I am paying for is supporting an ecologically F.U.B.A.R stocked trout program?

As a license purchaser I am forced to pay for the demise of what I volunteer precious time away from family and kids to try to preserve, our cold water ecosystems/native fish assemblages.

Does anyone else think that there should be a wild trout stamp(not the voluntary joke one thats an after thought Post funding of the hatchery system), a real wild trout stamp(resource first?). I want an opportunity to purchase a license to fish in only UNSTOCKED water for wild fish. I don’t want my license money to go towards hatcheries degradation of our waterways .

There should be a way to opt out of paying for that. PAFB Acts like everyone wants hatchery fish. Id love to see if the angling public was given an actual choice to support what they value individually: either support a wild trout fishing experience or a hatchery one, what would happen.

The fact is PA fish and boats hatchery stock-qua culture program needs the money from SO many people who absolutely hate current stocking practices to just barely stay in the black financially speaking and cater to two weekend a year anglers is disgusting. Why the h*** do we have to pay for this if we don’t want to use it????

 

[Fish Sticks]

We deserve an Opt out option of this circus and the ability to have license funds support the fishing experience we value. I want to get off this train.

Lets see if there are enough people who value stocked fish enough to take on the increased cost of a stocked trout stamp after an Opt out option. All the money of those currently forced to float the program against their will can go to the resource, which definitely is not first currently.

 

[silverfox]

I'd love to be able to opt-out of financially supporting the hatchery machine.

 

[Schaefer406]

I'd love to be able to opt-out of financially supporting the hatchery machine.

I second silverfox. Sick of the hatchery BS and would much rather have my money put towards legitimate conservation or improvement efforts.

 

[flyguyfishing]

Has there been any studies completed regarding reducing stocking (and therefore hatcheries) and effects on revenue for PFBC?

It seems PFBC is funded by fishing (and boating) licenses. If PFBC reduced stocking would they find themselves unemployed?

Annual Reports

www.fishandboat.com

These annual reports show budget. 2021 total expenditures $58mil. License fees accounted for $40.5mil of $65 mil of revenue. Most of the difference came from Federal/State grants totaling $12 mil.

 

[phiendWMD]

Yes please.

I just purchased a launch permit. I could have bought it from PFBC or DCNR. DCNR got my money.

 

[Mike]

Unless something has changed since 2019, you may have now limited yourself regarding where you may launch a boat and pull out. Also, you can’t use that boat on PFBC lakes. Of course if you don’t use public ramps, access areas, or PFBC lakes it’s a moot point.

 

[TPrettyman]

For most of PA doesn't the issue come down to habitat and climate? Many streams in the south and east of PA get much too warm to hold breeding wild trout.

I'm not sure how funds would go to wild trout in those areas - perhaps those areas can receive just regular stocky fish.

 

[silverfox]

Imagine how the Bass guys feel. Or anyone else who just wants to fish for anything other than trout. Assuming they realize part of their license fee is going to fund the propagation of trout that they may or may not care about.

I listened to a little bit of the last commissioner meeting about raising the license costs. I think they touched on this a little bit because one of the commissioners asked a similar question. Something to the effect of why doesn't the trout stamp fund the aquaculture side rather than general license buyers subsidizing something they clearly don't fish for (if they're not buying a trout stamp).

 

[Tom1980]

Unless something has changed since 2019, you may have now limited yourself regarding where you may launch a boat and pull out. Also, you can’t use that boat on PFBC lakes. Of course if you don’t use public ramps, access areas, or PFBC lakes it’s a moot point.

It's that kind of attitude that may have been his reasoning. Not everything is about what you get, sometimes it's about what your money supports.

 

[Mike]

Correction:

UN-POWERED BOAT PERMITS​

Unpowered boats used at Commission lakes or access areas, PA state parks or PA state forests must be:

• properly registered, or
• display an official and valid Commission use permit, or
• display an official and valid watercraft launch or mooring permit issued by DCNR.

 

[Hilltop]

Am I the only person who cringes and gets a little nauseated when I swipe my credit card for my license and trout stamp because I know the bulk of what I am paying for is supporting an ecologically F.U.B.A.R stocked trout program?

As a license purchaser I am forced to pay for the demise of what I volunteer precious time away from family and kids to try to preserve, our cold water ecosystems/native fish assemblages.

Does anyone else think that there should be a wild trout stamp(not the voluntary joke one thats an after thought Post funding of the hatchery system), a real wild trout stamp(resource first?). I want an opportunity to purchase a license to fish in only UNSTOCKED water for wild fish. I don’t want my license money to go towards hatcheries degradation of our waterways .

There should be a way to opt out of paying for that. PAFB Acts like everyone wants hatchery fish. Id love to see if the angling public was given an actual choice to support what they value individually: either support a wild trout fishing experience or a hatchery one, what would happen.

The fact is PA fish and boats hatchery stock-qua culture program needs the money from SO many people who absolutely hate current stocking practices to just barely stay in the black financially speaking and cater to two weekend a year anglers is disgusting. Why the h*** do we have to pay for this if we don’t want to use it????

You're not the only one. Could use all that money for stream access like the pgc gamelands. But that requires sacrifice and a commitment to the future which neither politicians or people whose paycheck depends on it have. Stocking is just so sad all the way around; stocking over wild trout, stocking fish in cesspools where they have no chance, seeing people following the truck from the hatchery to the stream, etc.

 

[Fish Sticks]

It just burns me up that the stocked trout get funded like almost 13 million first, non consensually by many of us wild trout fishermen, then PAFB comes back around like “hey native brook trout listed in PA wildlife action plan as species of greatest conservation need and could be gone from state by 2100, wanna throw some crumbs at voluntary wild trout stamp??” as an after thought. Thats figuratively and literally not resource first.

I have said it, you have said it on this thread, many PA guides/high profile anglers like Domenick Swentosky in his stocking article have said it…….

The majority of angler hours in this state want to pay for access/conservation easements.

Pafb HAS done this before too its not from out in left field. Youd only have to buy the riparian buffer and stream not the whole farm/parcel ect.

No one wants to pay to line up elbow to elbow squeezed in like a litter of piglets waiting for the teet for these garbage stocked fish that run onto private property, hurt the resource, and provide a 1 month fishery after stocked. as population grows and access doesn’t are our children going to deal with crowded combat fishing conditions on trout streams one to two months a year, or will PAFB change course and protect more of the resource and the most important component of our way of life, access to a stream?

 

[silverfox]

I've personally had an interesting bit of a revelation over the past few years with regard to stocking. Well, more like several revelations. Planting both feet firmly in the native species (not just trout) camp and looking beyond fishing has been a real eye-opener for me. I used to view stocking as somewhat benign, but that's changed drastically recently.

A while back I read a paper on public sentiment toward wildlife. The paper was based on a large survey that asked about the public's attitude toward wildlife. They found that sentiment is shifting from dominance over wildlife to sympathy toward wildlife. So whereas hunting and fishing were widely accepted for decades, more and more people are becoming more aligned with the conservation of wildlife as opposed to viewing wildlife as a resource.

I'm not saying I've become a card-carrying PETA member. I'm still a hunter and fisherman at heart and that will likely never change. I do, however, view some of our manipulation of wildlife, or animals in general, and the environment in a much different light today than I have in the past.

Beyond the negative impacts introducing nonnative species has to the native fish and even at an ecosystem function level, there is something a bit disturbing about the mass production of an animal with the intended purpose of death. From the hatcheries and the conditions the fish are raised in, to dumping them in public waters with the sole purpose of being killed is a bit sadistic.

I'm a fish lover at heart. Fish have always fascinated me. So I tend to sympathize with them even though they're generally viewed as elemental creatures. I guess I kind of feel bad for the hatchery fish, and it's crazy to me that we still do this.

I highly recommend people read "The Quest for the Golden Trout".

 

[Fish Sticks]

Yea and from a conservation standpoint the tragic part is even if you just took that 12-13million dollars annually that funds the hatcheries, put it in 10 gallon contractor bags, piled them up, and had a bon fire, the positive impact statewide with our coldwater ecosystems seeing ~9 million less state sponsored invasive species would be historic and enormous.

And instead even beyond that we could FURTHER that positive impact greatly by allotting a large amount of that money annually on preserving our native aquatic ecostems/access to them for anglers.

Thats a testament to how badly misspent our license dollars are currently . If the fish commission and elected politicians on the house and senate fish and game committees are to lazy to change the system “just because thats how its always been” despite the fact that it could be the single most wasteful fiscal/environmental process in Pa, then I want to be done paying for it personally.

 

[Solitariolupo]

As for stamps and being forced to buy a trout stamp when I’m fishing for other fish. I don’t agree with. As for wild fish vs stocking a little different when just talking about trout since the fish comm. stocks more than just trout. IMO there wouldn’t be many wild fish out there if they weren’t stocked at one point.

At least there are some places you only need a license and not a trout stamp.

 

[Fish Sticks]

As for stamps and being forced to buy a trout stamp when I’m fishing for other fish. I don’t agree with. As for wild fish vs stocking a little different when just talking about trout since the fish comm. stocks more than just trout. IMO there wouldn’t be many wild fish out there if they weren’t stocked at one point.

At least there are some places you only need a license and not a trout stamp.

I think that there would actually probably be more fish if stocking hadn’t taken place because one thing we have to remember is a-lot of the stocked fish are non native and disruptive to the food web. When you have a food web the coevolved with each other over millions of years and you throw in non natives and invasive species in water water ways on a time scale faster than any kind of coherent evolutionary process can take place you get these huge boom and bust cycles and rampant instability. Now we may not have the mind of fish people prefer to fish for but I think a functioning ecosystem can support more life than a manipulated destabilized one. Even in setting of wildly destructive man made landscape changes, people have greatly underestimated the living man made impairment’s to our ecosystem that get dumped in from buckets.

Scientific community gets it, collectively speaking, we don’t as lay people. There are proofs and examples of this like lake trout in pend oriellie in idaho, west coast invasive salmonids in great lakes now headed towards fisherie crash due to crash of invasive alweives, brown trouts current mysterious decline in Montana where they didnt evolve. Moral of the story is if you introduce non native species your really introducing instability and uncertainty for the future of the aquatic ecosystem and your fishing experience. It never stops with invasive species, just because you pick one dosn’t mean you get to keep it. All it takes is someone else with a bucket to put in what they want and crash the wild non natives that are the pst result of stocking. Look at growing concerns about flatheads blues and snakeheads in the susky from the smallmouth fishery perspective.

So in light of all that and the mountains of scientific literature on how harmful this stocking is on native game fish and non game fish and amphibians from all over this country, I think one thing almost all fly fishermen could agree on at this point is just not funding continued invasive species stocking with our license dollars where its harmful. If people want to put rainbow trout in penny packer park in philly where they won’t survive I don’t care but I don’t think any of us want to pay for them to go into PA’s limestoners and forested freestone streams.

 

[silverfox]

IMO there wouldn’t be many wild fish out there if they weren’t stocked at one point.

You say that as if it's a good thing. I know I'm getting way off the reservation here, but this idea that trout have to be unlimited is confusing once you realize how unnatural it is. Consider for a minute what the impact might be beyond trout. There are far more things living in our waters than trout. Do we know what the impact from introducing nonnative species has been on the ecosystem? On other lifeforms?

 

[Hilltop]

I've personally had an interesting bit of a revelation over the past few years with regard to stocking. Well, more like several revelations. Planting both feet firmly in the native species (not just trout) camp and looking beyond fishing has been a real eye-opener for me. I used to view stocking as somewhat benign, but that's changed drastically recently.

A while back I read a paper on public sentiment toward wildlife. The paper was based on a large survey that asked about the public's attitude toward wildlife. They found that sentiment is shifting from dominance over wildlife to sympathy toward wildlife. So whereas hunting and fishing were widely accepted for decades, more and more people are becoming more aligned with the conservation of wildlife as opposed to viewing wildlife as a resource.

I'm not saying I've become a card-carrying PETA member. I'm still a hunter and fisherman at heart and that will likely never change. I do, however, view some of our manipulation of wildlife, or animals in general, and the environment in a much different light today than I have in the past.

Beyond the negative impacts introducing nonnative species has to the native fish and even at an ecosystem function level, there is something a bit disturbing about the mass production of an animal with the intended purpose of death. From the hatcheries and the conditions the fish are raised in, to dumping them in public waters with the sole purpose of being killed is a bit sadistic.

I'm a fish lover at heart. Fish have always fascinated me. So I tend to sympathize with them even though they're generally viewed as elemental creatures. I guess I kind of feel bad for the hatchery fish, and it's crazy to me that we still do this.

I highly recommend people read "The Quest for the Golden Trout".

Yes, agree with all this. People call them disgusting finless trash, etc. But it's not like they really had a choice. Disturbing and sadistic are good words to describe it.

 

[Fish Sticks]

PAFB has fingers in ears screaming “LA LA LA LA LA” on the whole effects on greater food web/non game fish/ crustacean’s/ macros/invertebrates. Its the old “if we dont study it then its not taking place” fallacy.

The nice thing about an Opt out of sponsoring hatcheries/invasive species is that it puts the decision with the he individual so no one has to pay for harmful stocking that repulses them. People can decide for themselves and our states stocking capacity would reflect the publics values more accurate. I think everyone could get behind that kind of freedom and choice. Especially if the license dollars opted out went back into our cold water ecosystems.