Fingerling Programs in Your Neck of the Woods

[OldLefty]

Jack, I've followed what you've been saying and I agree.

While pcray may cite studies, I've observed wild trout brought into captivity and I've observed wild trout in streams become very comfortable with people and people providing them with nourishment...Pellets. They weren't doing their best to "run and hide" and they didn't disappear for hours before again showing themselves.

Yes, you could say that, since these wild trout were originally from a hatchery strain these traits had been bred out of them. Somehow, I have great difficulty accepting that.

I know also that when I was in West Virginia for a time the state TU folks would stock brown trout fingerlings in a number of streams which didn't have a reproducing population of trout: that is, until those fingerlings gained another couple years and some maturity and spawned successfully. Result, a new population of wild trout.

 

[pcray1231]

I think genetic concentration and likewise genetic diversity in animals that reproduce by large broods cannot be compared with animals such as humans and or chickens and turkey which do not.

Correct. You can concentrate traits and reduce diversity MUCH more quickly when broods are large.

This is UNNATURAL selection. We're choosing specifically which offspring to allow to survive and spawn. If you're breeding for size, for instance, you will get there quicker by choosing the largest of 1000 than by choosing the largest of 2.

Traits such as coloration and even shape might be selected over several broods, but I highly doubt that the ability to survive in a natural environment is a trait that can "bred-out" in even hundreds of years.

One negative trait can make a fish lose the ability to survive in a natural environment. Examples of such traits are color (if it makes you more visible to predators), and shape (which affects speed).

I do agree with you, though, Jack, in that in that the traits haven't been fully "bred out", just bred to be a minority. And whatever combination of minority traits are needed for survival becomes very rare.

It doesn't take long in a highly selective environment to make a common trait become rare, or a rare one common. It takes much longer to get rid of it altogether, or create it to begin with.

Hence, these populations, after a short couple of generations in a wild environment, would and do re-gain the traits needed for wild survival. They just need to last those first few generations.

Some reading:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071004143128.htm

http://nativefishsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/Chilcote-et-al-2011-h-w-reduced-recruitment.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0044848613005504

 

[afishinado]

Interesting subject.

While I don't have any answers, I suspect that many if not most of the wild brown trout we find here in PA have a strong link to the early stockings of trout. I say this because the keys for wild fish are very similar in just about every wild trout I have seen.

While spot patterns vary quite a bit; being large, small, dense, sparse, etc. nearly all wild brown trout exhibit a blue eye spot and have a deep red color in the spots and/or adipose fin as opposed to orangish color. Stocked trout do not exhibit these markers.

I know of no real identification keys for either wild rainbows or brook trout.

Hopefully, Mo the Trout Whisperer will chime in and comment. He has trout penned up in his basement and stares at them for hours on end....

 

[Mike]

Survival of hatchery trout in the wild:
A big difference between wild trout and hatchery trout is that the natural selection processes that immediately affect wild trout eggs, fry, and fingerlings are to a substantial extent delayed when trout are raised in a hatchery. All life stages of trout are treated against diseases; wild trout have no artificial protection in that regard. Some hatchery trout are protected against avian and other predators either through netting over raceways indirectly through human activity during the daytime. When the eagles' nest is active at Bellefonte Hatchery, even the eagles get into the act by defending the raceways against great blue herons. Hatchery trout are regularly fed and do not have to expend much energy while foraging. When hatchery trout are released into streams and lakes, suddenly all of the forces of nature from which they were protected are also released and the rate of mortality can be high.

 

[streamerguy]

Friday morning I fished one of the streams that has been receiving fingerling stockings. Even though the program is very unsuccessful, I did happen to catch this good sized fish. I suspect it was from the first year of the program? Thought it was a good sized wild fish at first, and prior to Friday I have only gotten wild fish out of the pool where I caught it. I admit my heart dropped when I saw the clipped adipose haha. Fun catch nonetheless, and it's cool to see at least one fish that survived to this size.

This was one of two fin clipped fingerling stockies that I caught in that stretch, and the other was a small fish......probably from this past fall.

 

[bigjohn58]

I guess I never saw this post before but I feel fingerling stockings are a total waste of time and money. The rainbow fingerlings on Fishing Creek in Clinton County disappear and do not seem to survive. Too many natural predators for them or something but after catching between 200-300 rainbows maybe one of them was a holdover. This is the worst I've seen Fishing Creek in the stocked section for holdover rainbows. Not sure the reason behind this but I do know for a fact that the rainbow fingerlings which they stocked thousands of are no longer in this stream. The fingerlings should look just like the holdover rainbows. Fingerling stocknigs are a nice idea but I do not feel they work at all!

 

[greenghost]

bigjohn58 wrote:
Fingerling stocknigs are a nice idea but I do not feel they work at all!

If it weren't for fingerlings in the Yough tailrace, there would be no fishery, I am convinced. And even on the Little J--after the major pollution incidents in the past--I suspect fingerling stockings helped with the recovery even though they are no longer needed now.

 

[mikesl]

Do all stocked rainbow fingerlings have clipped adipose fins?
Any details on Poho? I caught several in a recent outing there that I estimate to be fingerling + 1yr.

 

[pabrookie94]

The fish commission stocks 250,000 or so in the Kinzua reservoir and boy do the predators eat well...I think that's about all the farther they get

 

[SBecker]

There is a CRAP LOAD (actual measurement) of fingerlings currently in the Po. Can't keep the damn things off the hook.

 

[Stenonema]

If we accept that trout never stop adapting and continually hand down to the next generation better attributes or traits for survival as God intended, then why is it hard to believe that trout raised in captivity over many generations would be unable to adapt to changing conditions and thereby be genetically inferior to a wild trout that has adapted to the many changing conditions of any particular stream for survival.
I don't trust nor believe studies.
Do we know or understand the exact amount of time or generations it takes for trout once established to adapt well enough to fill a stream or watershed to a natural capacity meeting the habitat potential as we perceive it?
Do we have the patience to allow that to happen before dumping genetic pollution in to meet our selfish demands?
Bottom line is we are trying to do Gods work and in all our wisdom we continue to suppress potentially one of, if not the best trout state in the union.
While we continue to debate hypothesis and theories as well as assumptions we are defying the natural order for ourselves. The natural order does apply to us.
You say you cannot make a comparison of fish to humans.

Native American Indian = the native Brook trout
colorful, well adapted, naive to worldly ways and easily fooled or tricked.
Wild Brown trout = European settlers
more worldly, more adaptable, less easily fooled, Taking over habitat and displacing existing population
Stocked Trout = Urban America
Propped up, supported through propagation less adaptable, more aggressive and raised in an unnatural environment.

You don't have to be a college major to have common sense and you can keep your studies.
When we have as many arguments over whether a trout is wild or stocked how much more difficult is it to identify a fingerling raised in the wild to an actual wild trout. I cannot believe that they clip each and every adipose fin from all the fingerlings.
Planting fingerlings adds to the confusion evidenced by this discussion which is the most potentially damaging effect to any existing wild stock as it is for this reason IMHO. When a problem does come along in a wild population that is being planted over the planting represents many variables that have to be wagered into the equation. With that said, I am sure that we would overlook or miss that entirely if we noticed a problem at all.
Rant over....

 

[greenghost]

The one major flaw in that argument is that, with the exception of the brook trout, ALL wild trout fishing in the state today is the result of stocking in the past... Both distant past and fairly recent.

 

[troutbert]

greenghost wrote:
The one major flaw in that argument is that, with the exception of the brook trout, ALL wild trout fishing in the state today is the result of stocking in the past... Both distant past and fairly recent.

Brown trout were introduced starting in the late 1800s. Probably nearly all streams that have brown trout now already had populations established by the 1930s.

The original stockings were INTRODUCTIONS, which established brown trout in places where they had not been before.

All stockings of brown trout in streams that already HAVE brown trout populations are in a totally different category.

Once a brown trout population is well established, no additional stocking is needed. The brown trout population is maintained by natural reproduction.

It's the same as starlings or English sparrows or carp. Once stocked (introduced) and a population established, it does not take any additional stocking to maintain the population.

The idea that current trout stocking in PA is done for population purposes is one of the great myths and misconceptions.

Current stocking is done for the purpose of put-and-take. This is the term used by the PFBC. They will tell you they are stocking for recreation, not to establish or support wild trout populations. They are up front about this. I've heard PFBC biologists say this many times.

 

[mikesl]

tbert, I think you are right to explicitly state that point of what PFBC stocking aims to achieve.

With fingerling stocking, what is the PFBC's stated goal?

Is it to achieve a similar level of stocking for put-take as they would with adult stocking, but by more economical means?

Or is it to establish a "better quality product" in a stocked trout fishery (stream grown fingerlings "act more like real trout")?

 

[troutbert]

mikesl wrote:
tbert, I think you are right to explicitly state that point of what PFBC stocking aims to achieve.

With fingerling stocking, what is the PFBC's stated goal?

Is it to achieve a similar level of stocking for put-take as they would with adult stocking, but by more economical means?

Or is it to establish a "better quality product" in a stocked trout fishery (stream grown fingerlings "act more like real trout")?

From their website:

"Fingerling trout stockings are composed of sub-legal trout (less than the statewide minimum length limit of 7 inches). As part of Pennsylvania’s Trout Management Program, fingerling trout are used to provide angling opportunities on waters that have the potential to provide a trout fishery on a put-grow-take basis. The receiving waters must meet the general life requirements of trout on a year-round basis."

 

[mikesl]

Thanks

I see some upside over the long term in moving a stocked fishery from put-take (chase trucks, fish stocking points) to put-grow-take (or release)

Of course C&R only and a vibrant wild trout population would be better yet, but trying to be pragmatic.

I think the resulting stocked fishery in the put-grow model may be a much better recreational fishery (fish spread out, are found in all "fishy spots" along a stream --> more actual fishable streamlength, better utilization of the recreational resource )

I think if, over the long term, "trout fishing" becomes less synonymous with carnival-style race to harvest fresh stockies from a bridge pool, that is better overall for the kind of fishing I enjoy... and put-grow may actually be a step in that direction.

 

[Mike]

The fingerling browns (3.5 inches) that were stocked today behaved pretty normally with the exception that after 1.5 hrs after they were stocked a group was spaced out on a 15 ft long by 3 ft wide sand bar adjacent to a deeper pool and each fish was about 8 inches from the other in all directions. They were in about a foot of water and rising to drift. When I walked toward them they would all scatter....not habituated to humans once they hit the river. They also attracted the attention of an 18 inch brown from the near-by pool. That fish made high velocity foraging runs across the sand bar and along it length. A person could not have turned the crank of a spinning reel fast enough for that brown to not be able to catch up with a devour a lure.

 

[foxtrapper1972]

Donegal has some wild Browns.The fingerling Rainbows didn't seem to stick around long except maybe a few. VERY few small fish ever caught... Most of the fish that people are calling wild in Donegal are just holdover Browns that the club stocks. The fins grow back and they are red spotted. The stream is a mud hole. Any decent spawning areas would be way upstream but you don't see any fish up there.

 

[Mike]

There is enough BT reproduction in Donegal to support the present Class A equivalent biomass.

Addendum: #57above references the Schuylkill River between Rt 443 in Schuylkill Haven and Rt 61 in Pottsville.

 

[foxtrapper1972]

Mike said-"There is enough BT reproduction in Donegal to support the present Class A..."

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I know they say that but it really is hard to believe. If you fish it throughout the yr. you will catch very few small trout unlike other class A or lower streams in our region.
Are results of these surveys available somewhere?