Tucker733 wrote:
Thanks for sharing this, hopefully everyone fills it out in support of the regulation.
This would be a huge win for brook trout, I think this will have a bigger positive impact on the P&T fisheries than they realize.
Couldn't agree more. I've got to say, MD DNR is a top-notch Fish & Game agency. The fact that they're creating this regulation change with basically zero pressure or influence is an indication of their commitment to proper natural resource management.
While I'd rather they didn't put the rainbows in the USR, I'm not convinced at this point that they (the rainbows) cause much of a problem to the brookies. The brookies FAR outnumber the stockers at this point and the rainbows don't make it for a number of reasons.
This is much bigger than just the USR though. I think the best part about this is the regs in WMD on the stocked streams. Makes it easy to protect brookies when they might be down in 2nd or 3rd order streams hanging out in early spring. If you look at what they've done, it's genius. Stop raising/stocking brookies, then institute a statewide species protection. Without stocked brookies there is no arguing violations based on stocked/wild. Unless the violator doesn't know the difference between species. At that point though, it generally raises awareness among anglers that brookies are more important. Which is true.
Beyond brookies, I really think MD gets it right in a lot of decisions. They've got the Atlantic species to deal with too, so that they put so much effort into trout is impressive.
Somewhat off topic, but MD DNR is hosting a fishing roundtable on google meet on Thursday. This will be the 2nd one in 2 months. It's mostly a one way street, but I think it gives anglers a sense of involvement to host these open sessions. They go very smoothly and I don't see anyone complaining about DNR in these. In general it seems Marylanders are much more appreciative of DNR than PA is of Fish & Boat. I think some of that comes from how Maryland involves anglers in conservation efforts.
One of the awesome things they did recently was host a smallmouth bass tournament where the biggest fish from the tournament were held back as brood stock to harvest eggs/milt to raise the fingerlings they'll stock back in the Potomac. That's pretty cool. Rather than just go out and electro shock/collect brood stock, they turned it into a PR event. So those guys who caught the biggest fish in the Tourny not only got prizes for them, but also get to know that the fish they caught will help the population throughout the entire river.
Ok. Enough swooning over MD DNR from me. :-D
