JimKennedy
Active member
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2016
- Messages
- 253
A serious and civilized discussion of the merits of wild trout is worth having. We are among the people (at least those of you who live in Pennsylvania) are the ones whose voices are taken seriously when fisheries managers set policy. Yes, the meat hole guys, also potential voters, also get to have their voices heard. But when we demonstrate an understanding of the complexities of the issues involved and we are polite but persistent, we can effect movement to make a fisheries policy more palatable to our particular brand of fishing.
I believe we sharpen our skills and tighten our arguments when we have the opportunity to speak our minds among ourselves, hear new points of view and refine our positions. This requires reading each others comments, and respecting them, even as we refute aspects of those comments.
Participate for the betterment of the resource.
How we got here
Friedrich Karl Gustav Felix von Behr, of the German Fisheries Association, and Fred Mather, of the U.S. Fish Commission exchanged numerous letters in the 1870s and 1880s about the joys of fishing and ways to improve the state of fish populations in increasingly polluted waterways.
Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” had been published in 1859, and the take-away for many naturalists of the era (there were really no such thing as fisheries biologists in those days) was that the strong survive, giving rise to the mantra “survival of the fittest.” If native creatures could no longer thrive in American waterways, the logic went, bring in a new, “more fit” creature to take its place.
A solution proposed by von Behr to issues in the United States was to introduce European carp. Sturdy, fast-growing and popular as food fish among inland Europeans, carp would fill a niche increasingly vacated as native species were increasingly unavailable in industrialized areas.
Mather, meanwhile, surmised that annual runs of American shad and Pacific king salmon would be wonderful additions to German rivers flowing into the Baltic. Over a period of many years, the two shipped the eggs of carp, shad, Pacific salmon and other fish across the Atlantic as special cargo. Interestingly, many of the Germany-to-North America voyages were on ships that also carried European immigrants from Germany.
Carp were introduced in 1874, and hatched out in a facility in a park in Baltimore (Druid Hill Park, if memory serves). Initially, Mather’s office was inundated with requests from fledgling fish commissions all over the country asking for carp eggs. He gladly obliged. In a matter of a few years, carp were firmly established. A few years after that, the people who initially asked for them were asking for ways to get rid of them.
The carp are still here, even as those folks are long gone.
Brown trout arrive
Mather and von Behr had believed their legacy would be American shad and king salmon runs in German rivers, a king salmon run on the Susquehanna River and American shad in their millions spawning in the Mississippi. None of that happened, though through an unusual convergence of weather with egg plantings, American shad became established all along the Pacific coast.
And there’s the brown trout. F.K.G.F. von Behr sent Mather a shipment of brown trout eggs in 1883. Mather wrote a lot about how these eggs were a person to person gift, and that they were followed the next year by a shipment of brown trout eggs from Scotland. It’s often presumed that these eggs were the only sources of brown trout in the U.S., however Fish Commission records show that tens of thousands of brown trout eggs were subsequently received from Germany and Scotland for many years thereafter, not personal gifts. Anyhow, the first shipment from von Behr to Mather was divided three ways, and the eggs were hatched at locations in Michigan, New York state and, for the life of me I can’t remember the third location.
Mather also had some success in shipping California brook trout to fisheries organizations elsewhere in the world. California brook trout are, of course, what we call rainbow trout.
Eastern brook trout, meanwhile, were on the outs. They were disappearing from northeastern U.S. streams, but the brown trout were taking hold and replacing them. Survival of the fittest.
The way was cleared. Striped bass (rockfish) were introduced on the Pacific Coast. Large- and small-mouth bass, as well as channel catfish, were planted – and took root – in the Northeast.
Most of us grew up fishing for the creatures brought about by this well-intentioned but inherently flawed attempt to help nature along or improve on nature. These fish, of course, were introduced by the hand of state and federal governments, which is to say they were intentionally planted. As such, they generally aren’t referred to as “invasive,” at least not in the context of Pennsylvania and other eastern states.
Invasive vs. Introduced
Strictly speaking, “invasive” refers to creatures accidentally released into our waterways (such as zebra mussels and round gobies), or to creatures introduced by people not authorized to do so (northern snakeheads). Also, and interestingly, invasive also refers to creatures like blue catfish and Amur (silver) carp. These started out as “introduced” in certain waterways (blue catfish introduced by Virginia to provide sport fishing on the James River; silver carp, a supposedly sterile or triploid strain, to control grass in places like golf course ponds). They quickly moved beyond where they were first planted, invading places where they aren’t wanted.
And it’s not just fish. We have honeysuckle, wild rose vines, wine berries (often called wild red raspberries), stink bugs, Japanese beetles, nutria, sika deer, pheasants, chukars, European starlings, and on and on and on.
On the way to this situation we have lost vast populations of white bass (white perch), passenger pigeons, brook trout, Atlantic salmon and any number of other noble creatures.
In most cases, the reason is that we destroyed one resource and looked for another creature to replace it. Brook trout were well on their way to being wiped out when the browns and rainbows were brought in. I would argue that if not for the introduction of brown trout and the emergence of wild American strains, East Coast fly fishing for trout would be little more than a historical footnote about a sport people engaged in during the pre-Civil War era. (Mather, an officer for the Union Army who fought at Petersburg, writes extensively about fishing for brook trout and white perch as a boy in Albany, N.Y., only to see those creatures largely wiped out in the span of a few years as he got older.)
No brown trout does not equal more brook trout
In my mind, any discussion of removing introduced brown trout (wild rainbows in Pennsylvania are more rare than wild brook trout) and replacing them with brook trout needs to involve a much wider discussion, to include:
Research in the past few decades indicates that if a watershed is more than about 20 percent developed, brook trout can’t sustain themselves. The figure is much higher for brown trout. In other words, just because an urban or agricultural watershed can support a healthy population of wild brown trout does not mean it will support a comparable brook trout population. Wiping out the browns and trying to replace them with brook trout could well result in no wild trout.
Even more recent research shows a healthy brook trout population is migratory within a freshwater river system. A large stream, such as Maryland’s Savage River, will be home to the brood stock, and these large fish will spawn in the smaller creeks. Meanwhile, the small fish will move into the small tributaries. In short, re-establishing a thriving stock of brook trout means ensuring not only small tributaries are viable in terms of temperature and development, but larger creeks also need to be up to standard.
Temperature is vital. The elimination of forest canopy in a watershed will increase water temperatures substantially. There is some evidence that elevated stream temperatures can be brought down if a stream returns to a wooded area, but the reality is brook trout habitat requires temperatures in the mid 60s or lower (though they can briefly tolerate up to 68 degrees). Brown trout, meanwhile, can thrive even as temperatures push into the low 70s, though mid 60s is ideal for them as well. (Interestingly, while rainbows can tolerate higher temperatures than brown trout, they need consistently lower temperatures than even brook trout to thrive. This is what makes wild rainbows such an oddity in Pennsylvania.)
There’s a belief, rooted in the writings of Mr. Mather, that most brook trout around now are the descendants of a hatchery strain devised by Seth Green, a fellow US Fish Commission leader. This strain, according to the Mather account, grows to about 11 or 12 inches in three years, but only lives for about three years. The strain was widely stocked by the USFC and ended up replacing or overwriting what we now refer to as “heritage strains.” It is not wholly clear exactly how much stock can be put in this three-year brook trout assertion. Mather had a personal dislike of Green and rarely missed an opportunity to criticize him. It is clear, however, that a “heritage strain” that thrives in the Savage River network might not work in a river system on the Tug Hill Plateau in upstate New York, or in a limestone system in the Cumberland Valley. There’s reason to believe it’s possible to breed river-specific strains of brook trout from the genetic variety remaining, but we are far from perfecting this brand of wild animal husbandry. All you need to do to realize the difficulty of such a project is to look at efforts to bring Atlantic salmon back to Lake Ontario or the Connecticut River.
My outlook
I enjoy fishing for wild trout, and that mostly means brown trout. I make it a point to fish for brook trout a few times a year because they’re beautiful and I enjoy spending time in the pristine places where they thrive. But if the only trout I could fish for was brookies, I’d probably fish for bass. I would love a scenario where I could drive 30 minutes to an hour from my Baltimore home and reasonably expect to catch three or four 9 inch brook trout. I can do that with browns, and there are brook trout in that range, but a 7-incher is a monster.
At present, there are a few projects in Maryland that are targeting the big-stream and tributary model. Savage is the main one, but there are others closer to the metroplex region. I am very interested to see how these evolve over time. For one of the non-Savage drainages, I occasionally fish the small tribs and do catch brook trout, but the larger stream has some serious temperature challenges. For another of the non-Savage drainages, the main creek is blessed with a few in-stream springs, and it supports marginal populations of wild browns and brooks, but if the browns were to disappear, you could fish it regularly for years on end and never catch a trout. Many of the small tribs are brown only, and a few are brook and brown (with the very occasional tiger).
I’ll be damned if I’m going to advocate the wholesale killing of wild brown trout on the theory that they’ll be replaced by brookies. If I thought it would happen, I would be all in, but just as Mather and von Behr were certain that their efforts would be a vast improvement over what nature had on offer, moral certainty about the need to get rid of brown trout is not well supported by science. For now, I’ll support efforts to bring back brook trout – even when that means there are no trout in some streams where browns could easily thrive -- and fish mainly for wild browns.
Ultimately, I’d love to see the day when all trout stocking stops and wild trout are managed like wild bass. But I don’t want to see a situation where fishing opportunities are eliminated because of a purist notion that quick action can return our waterways to how they were before Colombus.
But that’s just me. Speak up. Refute what I’ve written. Say your piece. Add your knowledge. And remember, we’re all friends here, or at least brother anglers, so kindly refrain from attacking the person when you really just want to attack the idea.
Have at it.
I believe we sharpen our skills and tighten our arguments when we have the opportunity to speak our minds among ourselves, hear new points of view and refine our positions. This requires reading each others comments, and respecting them, even as we refute aspects of those comments.
Participate for the betterment of the resource.
How we got here
Friedrich Karl Gustav Felix von Behr, of the German Fisheries Association, and Fred Mather, of the U.S. Fish Commission exchanged numerous letters in the 1870s and 1880s about the joys of fishing and ways to improve the state of fish populations in increasingly polluted waterways.
Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” had been published in 1859, and the take-away for many naturalists of the era (there were really no such thing as fisheries biologists in those days) was that the strong survive, giving rise to the mantra “survival of the fittest.” If native creatures could no longer thrive in American waterways, the logic went, bring in a new, “more fit” creature to take its place.
A solution proposed by von Behr to issues in the United States was to introduce European carp. Sturdy, fast-growing and popular as food fish among inland Europeans, carp would fill a niche increasingly vacated as native species were increasingly unavailable in industrialized areas.
Mather, meanwhile, surmised that annual runs of American shad and Pacific king salmon would be wonderful additions to German rivers flowing into the Baltic. Over a period of many years, the two shipped the eggs of carp, shad, Pacific salmon and other fish across the Atlantic as special cargo. Interestingly, many of the Germany-to-North America voyages were on ships that also carried European immigrants from Germany.
Carp were introduced in 1874, and hatched out in a facility in a park in Baltimore (Druid Hill Park, if memory serves). Initially, Mather’s office was inundated with requests from fledgling fish commissions all over the country asking for carp eggs. He gladly obliged. In a matter of a few years, carp were firmly established. A few years after that, the people who initially asked for them were asking for ways to get rid of them.
The carp are still here, even as those folks are long gone.
Brown trout arrive
Mather and von Behr had believed their legacy would be American shad and king salmon runs in German rivers, a king salmon run on the Susquehanna River and American shad in their millions spawning in the Mississippi. None of that happened, though through an unusual convergence of weather with egg plantings, American shad became established all along the Pacific coast.
And there’s the brown trout. F.K.G.F. von Behr sent Mather a shipment of brown trout eggs in 1883. Mather wrote a lot about how these eggs were a person to person gift, and that they were followed the next year by a shipment of brown trout eggs from Scotland. It’s often presumed that these eggs were the only sources of brown trout in the U.S., however Fish Commission records show that tens of thousands of brown trout eggs were subsequently received from Germany and Scotland for many years thereafter, not personal gifts. Anyhow, the first shipment from von Behr to Mather was divided three ways, and the eggs were hatched at locations in Michigan, New York state and, for the life of me I can’t remember the third location.
Mather also had some success in shipping California brook trout to fisheries organizations elsewhere in the world. California brook trout are, of course, what we call rainbow trout.
Eastern brook trout, meanwhile, were on the outs. They were disappearing from northeastern U.S. streams, but the brown trout were taking hold and replacing them. Survival of the fittest.
The way was cleared. Striped bass (rockfish) were introduced on the Pacific Coast. Large- and small-mouth bass, as well as channel catfish, were planted – and took root – in the Northeast.
Most of us grew up fishing for the creatures brought about by this well-intentioned but inherently flawed attempt to help nature along or improve on nature. These fish, of course, were introduced by the hand of state and federal governments, which is to say they were intentionally planted. As such, they generally aren’t referred to as “invasive,” at least not in the context of Pennsylvania and other eastern states.
Invasive vs. Introduced
Strictly speaking, “invasive” refers to creatures accidentally released into our waterways (such as zebra mussels and round gobies), or to creatures introduced by people not authorized to do so (northern snakeheads). Also, and interestingly, invasive also refers to creatures like blue catfish and Amur (silver) carp. These started out as “introduced” in certain waterways (blue catfish introduced by Virginia to provide sport fishing on the James River; silver carp, a supposedly sterile or triploid strain, to control grass in places like golf course ponds). They quickly moved beyond where they were first planted, invading places where they aren’t wanted.
And it’s not just fish. We have honeysuckle, wild rose vines, wine berries (often called wild red raspberries), stink bugs, Japanese beetles, nutria, sika deer, pheasants, chukars, European starlings, and on and on and on.
On the way to this situation we have lost vast populations of white bass (white perch), passenger pigeons, brook trout, Atlantic salmon and any number of other noble creatures.
In most cases, the reason is that we destroyed one resource and looked for another creature to replace it. Brook trout were well on their way to being wiped out when the browns and rainbows were brought in. I would argue that if not for the introduction of brown trout and the emergence of wild American strains, East Coast fly fishing for trout would be little more than a historical footnote about a sport people engaged in during the pre-Civil War era. (Mather, an officer for the Union Army who fought at Petersburg, writes extensively about fishing for brook trout and white perch as a boy in Albany, N.Y., only to see those creatures largely wiped out in the span of a few years as he got older.)
No brown trout does not equal more brook trout
In my mind, any discussion of removing introduced brown trout (wild rainbows in Pennsylvania are more rare than wild brook trout) and replacing them with brook trout needs to involve a much wider discussion, to include:
Research in the past few decades indicates that if a watershed is more than about 20 percent developed, brook trout can’t sustain themselves. The figure is much higher for brown trout. In other words, just because an urban or agricultural watershed can support a healthy population of wild brown trout does not mean it will support a comparable brook trout population. Wiping out the browns and trying to replace them with brook trout could well result in no wild trout.
Even more recent research shows a healthy brook trout population is migratory within a freshwater river system. A large stream, such as Maryland’s Savage River, will be home to the brood stock, and these large fish will spawn in the smaller creeks. Meanwhile, the small fish will move into the small tributaries. In short, re-establishing a thriving stock of brook trout means ensuring not only small tributaries are viable in terms of temperature and development, but larger creeks also need to be up to standard.
Temperature is vital. The elimination of forest canopy in a watershed will increase water temperatures substantially. There is some evidence that elevated stream temperatures can be brought down if a stream returns to a wooded area, but the reality is brook trout habitat requires temperatures in the mid 60s or lower (though they can briefly tolerate up to 68 degrees). Brown trout, meanwhile, can thrive even as temperatures push into the low 70s, though mid 60s is ideal for them as well. (Interestingly, while rainbows can tolerate higher temperatures than brown trout, they need consistently lower temperatures than even brook trout to thrive. This is what makes wild rainbows such an oddity in Pennsylvania.)
There’s a belief, rooted in the writings of Mr. Mather, that most brook trout around now are the descendants of a hatchery strain devised by Seth Green, a fellow US Fish Commission leader. This strain, according to the Mather account, grows to about 11 or 12 inches in three years, but only lives for about three years. The strain was widely stocked by the USFC and ended up replacing or overwriting what we now refer to as “heritage strains.” It is not wholly clear exactly how much stock can be put in this three-year brook trout assertion. Mather had a personal dislike of Green and rarely missed an opportunity to criticize him. It is clear, however, that a “heritage strain” that thrives in the Savage River network might not work in a river system on the Tug Hill Plateau in upstate New York, or in a limestone system in the Cumberland Valley. There’s reason to believe it’s possible to breed river-specific strains of brook trout from the genetic variety remaining, but we are far from perfecting this brand of wild animal husbandry. All you need to do to realize the difficulty of such a project is to look at efforts to bring Atlantic salmon back to Lake Ontario or the Connecticut River.
My outlook
I enjoy fishing for wild trout, and that mostly means brown trout. I make it a point to fish for brook trout a few times a year because they’re beautiful and I enjoy spending time in the pristine places where they thrive. But if the only trout I could fish for was brookies, I’d probably fish for bass. I would love a scenario where I could drive 30 minutes to an hour from my Baltimore home and reasonably expect to catch three or four 9 inch brook trout. I can do that with browns, and there are brook trout in that range, but a 7-incher is a monster.
At present, there are a few projects in Maryland that are targeting the big-stream and tributary model. Savage is the main one, but there are others closer to the metroplex region. I am very interested to see how these evolve over time. For one of the non-Savage drainages, I occasionally fish the small tribs and do catch brook trout, but the larger stream has some serious temperature challenges. For another of the non-Savage drainages, the main creek is blessed with a few in-stream springs, and it supports marginal populations of wild browns and brooks, but if the browns were to disappear, you could fish it regularly for years on end and never catch a trout. Many of the small tribs are brown only, and a few are brook and brown (with the very occasional tiger).
I’ll be damned if I’m going to advocate the wholesale killing of wild brown trout on the theory that they’ll be replaced by brookies. If I thought it would happen, I would be all in, but just as Mather and von Behr were certain that their efforts would be a vast improvement over what nature had on offer, moral certainty about the need to get rid of brown trout is not well supported by science. For now, I’ll support efforts to bring back brook trout – even when that means there are no trout in some streams where browns could easily thrive -- and fish mainly for wild browns.
Ultimately, I’d love to see the day when all trout stocking stops and wild trout are managed like wild bass. But I don’t want to see a situation where fishing opportunities are eliminated because of a purist notion that quick action can return our waterways to how they were before Colombus.
But that’s just me. Speak up. Refute what I’ve written. Say your piece. Add your knowledge. And remember, we’re all friends here, or at least brother anglers, so kindly refrain from attacking the person when you really just want to attack the idea.
Have at it.
