Is there any Data to show which northeastern states have the largest tout populations?

[jay1963]

Good morning, I have been looking on the net and have not been able to find any such data.
The reason is that when I was checking out which rivers I was going to fish in Colorado I found lots of data stating how many fish per mile of river.
Now I want to see what is around this area within say 6-hour drive.
Have a Great Day
Jay

 

[PennypackFlyer]

What is tout? Is that a desease in the water?

 

[gulfgreyhound]

I think there are surveys of trout per mile of stream. Check the state web sites for this info.GG

 

[RLeep2]

Speaking only in regards to streams in states either east of the Mississippi or bordering on the Mississippi, the only place I've seen tabulated and relatively comprehensive data of this sort available is when it can be cherry picked from other articles or news releases from the various state fisheries agencies where hard numbers about wild trout populations or densities are mentioned as a way of illustrating a "recovery" or "comeback" situation on a specific stream or watershed. Otherwise, the best information I've seen is the more rough-cut classification systems like PA and Wisconsin's A-E and I-III respectively. I suppose any state fisheries management agency in the region defined above could tabulate and publish this information if the cost of doing so could be absorbed and justified among all the other priorities they have to deal with.
It wouldn't be cheap, that's for sure..

Personally, I wouldn't be for it. The influence of the internet and technology on our sport has already created a situation where getting off our semi-dead arses and finding out for ourselves has been significantly devalued and supplanted. I don't think this is healthy for our fisheries or for anglers either for that matter.

If you have specific questions about streams or watersheds, contacting the fisheries folks in the area in question usually will get you some if not all of the information you seek. Just don't email them on Tuesday and expect a reply by Thursday. They are all overtaxed with what they already have to do on a day to day basis and more often than not are working for an agency that is living from hand to mouth to some degree. There aren't a whole lot of additional resources to address our whims. My view would that given their workloads, we are fortunate to get as much information as we do.

 

[jay1963]

Thank you for the response, also sorry for the spelling error in the header.
I was just trying determine a good a location for vacation.
Have a good day

 

[franklin]

Might be better if you inquired about good locations with trout to vacation, 6 hours or less from eastern PA. Also when you are planning to go.

I was up in New Hampshire on business one time and I stopped at a fly shop to inquire about good places in NH to vacation and fish. Shop keper says they have great places to vacation but not so much good trout fishing. He then says if I want good trout fishing go vacation in Pennsylvania. To which I replied, "that's where I'm from". He went on to tell me his favorite stream was Spring Creek and he stays at a B&B in Bellfonte.

Anyway some spots to consider; Adirondacks in NY, Shenandoah in Va, Maine. I've actually backpacked in central NH and observed some nice wild trout in some back country streams. This was in Crawford Notch area. Did not fish on those trips.

 

[RLeep2]

Franklin made a much better response than I. I'm kinda grumbly today. My agolopies as well as my apologies for my tenor...

I've always heard that a good region to target, especially if you are a bit of an explorer and don't mind some hikes, etc. is the Tug Hill Plateau of New York State. Sort of on the SW edge of the Adirondacks and to the NE of the zoo at Pulaski. Lots of small streams as well as some decent size ones. And lots of wild brooks & browns

 

[pcray1231]

For one, in PA we typically do not use "trout per mile" as a measure. And for good reason. It's a rather useless measure. 1000 trout per mile may be awefully impressive on a 10 ft wide brookie stream but would be a complete joke on a large river the size of the Delaware, for instance.

We use biomass per surface area. It ain't perfect but it's a much better measure. It adjusts for stream size as well as fish size. Then we categorize them as class A, B, C, or D based on biomass.

Anyway, PA rarely gives you the actual population in a number figure. The exception to that rule is "wilderness" trout streams, where they usually do list the population in kg/hectare for a given stream. That list, with a map, is found here:

http://fishandboat.com/wild98.htm

Being on the wilderness list does not really mean anything in terms of fish population, it's just publicly accessible and far from roads that the PFBC wants to highlight as "wilderness" type experiences. We do list class A streams, which are generally our best. That list is found here, and can be mapped as well.

http://fishandboat.com/classa.pdf

They also have a "streams with natural reproduction list", which lists all class A, B, C, and D streams, found here:

http://fishandboat.com/trout_repro.pdf

From that, if a stream is on the natural reproduction list but not the class A, then it has wild trout but is not class A. There is currently no publicized way to determine whether it is B, C, or D. The PFBC office does have this data, by county or region, and it is generally available by asking your local office.

As for what exactly class A means? Well:

Brook trout: Brook trout biomass at least 30 kg/ha, brook trout < 5.9" at least 0.1 kg/ha (meaning young fish are present, and brook trout make up at least 75% of the biomass.

Brown trout: Brown trout biomass at least 40 kg/ha, brown trout

 

[duckfoot]

To be fair, "trout per mile" is much easier for the average American fisherman to understand than a kilogram or a hectare.

 

[franklin]

RLeep2 wrote:
Franklin made a much better response than I. I'm kinda grumbly today. My agolopies as well as my apologies for my tenor...

I've always heard that a good region to target, especially if you are a bit of an explorer and don't mind some hikes, etc. is the Tug Hill Plateau of New York State. Sort of on the SW edge of the Adirondacks and to the NE of the zoo at Pulaski. Lots of small streams as well as some decent size ones. And lots of wild brooks & browns

I have vacationed above Herkimer NY and fished West Canada Creek. Another time at Lake Placid and another NW of Saratoga Springs. While these were not purely fishing destinations I did find good fishing near each location.

 

[jay1963]

Wow again thanks for he great input. I have always wanted to know about the biomass numbers i have seen, maybe I will just jump into the woods of pa and see what I can find before lookig at other states.
Thanks

 

[pcray1231]

What you will find in PA, is that while we do have a handful of larger waterways with wild trout, by and large they are the exception rather than the rule.

We have a whole lot of wild trout streams, but most of them are found in streams ranging from VERY small to medium sized, not that many on larger waters.

This is a good link for mapping:

http://www.pasda.psu.edu/uci/SearchResults.aspx?originator=Pennsylvania%20Fish%20and%20Boat%20Commission&Keyword=&searchType=originator&entry=PASDA&sessionID=1059744962016323142658

The two to focus on would be the class A, and the streams with natural reproduction. Hit the lightning bolt, then preview data. It'll bring up a map with those "lists" mapped out on a google or bing type map, and you can adjust how your map looks in terms of streets, physical, satellite, etc. You can then zoom around and explore the area where you are.

Note, those two are just wild trout, but from the same link you can look up stocked waters as well.

 

[franklin]

You do have this book "Trout Streams of Pennsylvania: An Angler's Guide by Dwight Landis" don't you?

TB, is this currently in print?

I made the assumption that the OP had fished a bit around PA. If not you will find several good books on fishing locations in PA including the one above.

 

[krayfish2]

PFBC can't give you trout per mile like 45 other states can. They can only provide trout stocked per mile. Pathetic.

 

[Dave_W]

pcray1231 wrote:
For one, in PA we typically do not use "trout per mile" as a measure. And for good reason. It's a rather useless measure. 1000 trout per mile may be awefully impressive on a 10 ft wide brookie stream but would be a complete joke on a large river the size of the Delaware, for instance.

We use biomass per surface area. It ain't perfect but it's a much better measure. It adjusts for stream size as well as fish size. Then we categorize them as class A, B, C, or D based on biomass.

This ^
Pcray nailed it (as usual).

Jay1963,
The description of a stream as having so many trout per mile is a common designation in western states and is usually associated with bigger tailrace rivers. It is really rather arbitrary when compared to the biomass (kilograms per hectare) used to categorize streams here in PA. Some streams in PA are categorized by numbers of fish per mile (or estimated numbers per mile) or numbers per section.

Very generally speaking, a high quality wild trout stream in PA of medium size can and often does hold over a thousand fish per mile. A much smaller stream may have only 300 per mile but this is a much denser population if a stream is only ten feet across. It's also important to remember that in a state such as ours with so many streams, that the PFBC can only survey so many and they usually survey only a single section (or sections). This sampling manner allows for comparisons of change over time and does give a broad picture of what the rest of the stream might have. To make such large generalizations, however, are likely so far off the mark and involve such great error margin. . .that the PFBC (wisely) does not try to provide population per mile estimates for all the lengths of all our streams.

It's fun stuff to ponder and figure, but all very relative.

 

[salmonoid]

I think one of the challenges would be that each state agency that is responsible for fisheries looks at this from a different metric. In PA, if you knew the biomass for a stream, and knew the hydraulic characteristics of the stream (i.e. how wide it is), then I suppose you could convert that biomass to a TPM estimate. But there is just a lot of variability in how states survey data and I don't see there being any compelling reason for them to form a data standardization coalition for tracking trout density.

Regarding a good spot for a location, if trout density is your primary consideration, then you're probably limited to looking at the biomass information that PA publishes. For me, I'm satisfied with fishing in an environment that has trout period, and preferably one that has nice surroundings.

Just because I like to keep stats, I have created my own metric this year, as a very simple way of tabulating fish caught for effort generated. This came about after I ended up hiking almost seven miles one afternoon, and tallying just 5 trout, for a TPMW (Trout Per Mile Walked) value of 0.71. As I was sending a note to my brother that included both individual stats, it occurred to me that keeping a ratio of them might be interesting. Spring Creek yielded TPMW ratios of 1.59, 4.70, and 5.51, but to provide context, time spent fishing and conditions would need to be factored in. Mile Walked includes all distance covered - hiking to the stream, fishing, and hiking back from the stream.

 

[pcray1231]

I think the PFBC does a better job than just about ANY other state at conveying where our wild trout are and in what densities.

Good Lord they try to track down every single stream. The list of wild trout streams is 3500 streams long and dozens are added each year. When you look at those adds, some are like intermittent drainage ditches. Each broken into sections and each section gets rated on how many lbs of wild trout are present per surface area of water and what the species mix is.

Go to NY and sure, they may highlight a few famous waters but find a list of every single stream with wild fish and how many? Ain't happening.

Out west, yes, they may say so and so river has 7000 fish per mile. It's also got dozens of tributaries, each having more tributaries. They ain't rated. In PA, with a handful of exceptions, that big main river has no trout. But we list and rate every one of it's tribs that do, and tribs of those tribs, down to the level of "un-named trib to Joe's Creek from Jim Bob's old springhouse downstream to the yellow church, mixed Brown and brook trout, class A", followed by freakin GPS coordinates, what % is public, private but allows fishing, or private and posted, water chemistry data, etc. They'll even provide an overlay to put it on Google maps or Bing. What more can you really ask for?

 

[Mike]

krayfish,
I am not aware of any list, wild trout or stocked trout, that provides a trout per mile figure in Pa. I am not even sure that it would be helpful to anglers on a stocked trout stream. It might even be more frustrating for them. One SE Pa DH Area receives one of the highest stocked trout per mile of any stocked waters in the SE yet anglers here frequently report relatively modest catches. Beyond what I consider to be a fairly low threshold value, I don't think that numbers of trout present generally trump technique, skill, and timing factors unless anglers happen to be sitting on a "bucket hole." Even then, some anglers consistently do better than others. (Example: Even on opening day the average catch rate is one trout per trip and the average trip length is 2.5-3.0 hrs).

 

[jay1963]

Again I want to say thank you all fro the response, I now have a better understanding on the data.
good fishing to all
Jay

 

[pcray1231]

Very generally speaking, a high quality wild trout stream in PA of medium size can and often does hold over a thousand fish per mile.

Super basic and rough calculation.

Take 40 kg/hectare. That's the bar that separates class A from class B.

40 kg = 88 lbs. The weight of a single fish averages .15 lbs for a 7 incher and .40 lbs for a 10 incher. If we use .25 lbs for the AVERAGE fish weight, that means 88 lbs is 352 fish.

1 hectare is 10,000 sq. meters. 1 mile is 1609 meters. So if a stream averages 6.2 meters/20.3 ft across, 1 mile = 1 hectare.

So a stream that's about 20 ft across on average, you need about 350 average sized fish per mile to reach class A status. At 40 ft across, it'd be close to 700 fish/mile. At 80 ft across, 1400 fish per mile, etc.

That's the MINIMUM to be class A, i.e. 40 kg/hectare. It's also a pretty rough estimate. i.e. a stream with lots of small fish will have more fish/mile for the same biomass, and a stream with more lunkers will be less fish/mile.

We do have streams with biomass numbers upwards of 100 kg/hectare.