Native vs. Wild

D

dcoffey

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Feb 9, 2009
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So I am wondering what folks call a brook trout caught in a mountain stream....wild or native? When would each be used correctly? It just seems to me that they are one in the same. Didn't the original "native" brook trout become extinct long, long ago?
 
dcoffey wrote:
So I am wondering what folks call a brook trout caught in a mountain stream....wild or native? When would each be used correctly? It just seems to me that they are one in the same. Didn't the original "native" brook trout become extinct long, long ago?
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They are both wild and native.

No, native brook trout did not go extinct.
 
I'm not sure if I am correct or not, but I use the term "native" to refer to a brook trout that has not been stocked, and "wild" to refer to any other species of trout that was born in the water where it was caught.

I'm not sure what to call the offspring of stocked brook trout that survive and reproduce in the waters where stocked.

I believe you are mistaken about native strains of brook trout. There are probably hundreds of streams in Pennsylvania with heritage strains of brook trout that trace their lineage all the way back to the last ice age. Those populations, however may be becoming rarer. There are other members of this site with better qualifications to answer this question.

If you are a reader I suggest reading: Behnke, Robert J.; Tomelleri, Joseph (2002). Trout and Salmon of North America. Free Press. ISBN 0743222202. I read this over 20 years ago.

Tight lines!
 
I was also wondering if the book , Brook Trout by Nick Karas is worth a look. As I get older, I am becoming more and more intrigued with the history of our brook trout. I also am in the process of reading, The Vanishing Trout.
 
dcoffey wrote:
I was also wondering if the book , Brook Trout by Nick Karas is worth a look. As I get older, I am becoming more and more intrigued with the history of our brook trout. I also am in the process of reading, The Vanishing Trout.
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Karas' book is an interesting read, but the edition I have is absolutely horribly edited. There are a couple of places were an identical photo is used with differing captions (one caption matches the photo, the other does not), and there are numerous spelling and grammatical errors. The editing was bad enough that I could not get through the book and it is on my shelf, unfinished. Subject, good. Editing, bad.
 
I think the Karas book is worth the time spent reading it.
 
I have changed my stance on this. Before I only considered Brooke trout to be Natives and Stream born OR fingerling stocked fish to be wild. But it makes no sense to not call every stream born fish a native. If we consider ourselves "Natives" of the states we come from we can't discredit Browns and bows from being Natives bc unless you are 100% Native American none of us our really Natives of our states if you trace our lineage. It contradicts itself IMO.
 
Browns and rainbows can be naturalized citizens (that is how I view them), but just because something makes a home somewhere does not make it native. You are confusing birth origin with species range. We have transported species to new ranges, where they establish wild populations, but they are not native. My birth origin is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but the majority of my ancestral roots are from Germany. So I guess I am like Salmo Trutta. My grandfather's grandmother was Native American, so I have a small native claim.
 
The terms wild and native are commonly used and their means are widely accepted in the fisheries field.

The term wild refers to a naturally sustaining population, whether native or non-native.

The term native refers to the place of origin.

In PA brook trout are native because they've been here for many thousands of years, and were not introduced here by man.

Brown trout are an introduced species, from Europe, rainbow trout were from the western US.

You can of course make up your own meanings for terms and disregard the commonly understood and accepted meanings. For example you could refer to a bicycle as a turnip.






 
This all stemmed from looking at a shirt from "Rep Your Water". It had a picture of a brook trout on the front and underneath it the word "native".
I grew up fishing the Falling Spring and the "ditch" on Big Spring. When I caught a brook trout from those areas, I would call them wild. When I went up north to my cabin and caught trout out of the mountain streams, I would call them natives. I found it very interesting why I would call the same species something different based on location and topography within the state.
 
I think we should build a wall to keep out the all of the immigrant rainbows and browns.
 
Native > Wild > Stocked

My lifetime goal is to catch as many native species with a fly rod in the lower 48.

I might be missing a few but this is what my list looks like so far. I excluded , Atlantic Salmon from NY.

Brook trout, PA
Small mouth, Allegheny River PA
Steelhead- Trinity River , CA
Apache Trout, AZ
Greenback Cutthroat, CO
Rio Grande Cutthroat, S Central CO
Golden Trout , CA
McCloud River Redband Rainbow, CA
Lahontan Cutthroat, CA
Goose Lake Redband Rainbow, CA
Grayling, Upper Big Hole River MT
Westslope Cutthroat , MT
Yellowstone Cutthroat, MT
Finespotted Snake River Cutthroat, WY
Bonneville Cutthroat, WY
Colorado River Cutthroat, WY
Bull Trout, MT
Mountain Whitefish, MT
Columbia Basin Redband, OR

I follow the species list of Dr. Robert J. Behnke , aside from the small mouth.


 
The labels are all a little desultory.

Smallmouths are an invasive species in PA in the Susky and Delaware Rivers since they were on found in the Ohio River drainage and Great Lakes before they were stocked in other PA rivers.

A brook trout is the only native trout in PA, but it's not really a trout at all...it's classified as a "char"...?!

Is a stocked brookie a considered a native?!...and a wild brown trout a invasive?!

Most paramount should be preserving "native" brook trout; but most important, if we do what's right and take care of all of the cold water streams, wild trout will swim in PA for decades and centuries to come.
 
troutbert wrote:
The terms wild and native are commonly used and their means are widely accepted in the fisheries field.

The term wild refers to a naturally sustaining population, whether native or non-native.

The term native refers to the place of origin.

In PA brook trout are native because they've been here for many thousands of years, and were not introduced here by man.

Brown trout are an introduced species, from Europe, rainbow trout were from the western US.

You can of course make up your own meanings for terms and disregard the commonly understood and accepted meanings. For example you could refer to a bicycle as a turnip.
Click to expand...

Well said. And, I might add, fingerlings are, in no way, "wild" or "native". If they're stocked, doesn't matter at what stage of growth, they're stocked. Period.
 
Do you guys consider all wild brook trout in Pennsylvania to be native? If a population of brook is extirpated from a particular stream or watershed, then reintroduced, are those fish truly native? Or are they wild/non-native brook trout at that point?
 
troutbert wrote:

You can of course make up your own meanings for terms and disregard the commonly understood and accepted meanings. For example you could refer to a bicycle as a turnip.
Click to expand...
Wait....so you're against disregarding commonly understood meanings?

On another note I found out literally now also can mean figuratively, so can't we just eliminate that from our dictionary.
 
T Tracker,

I think if they are wiped out, reintroduced, and then form a self-sustaining population, they are wild trout, not native to the stream. I think true natives are the ones that have lived and reproduced in a stream "forever." That is my humble opinion, but that's how I understand wild vs. native terminology.

(I guess it's really a matter of semantics anyhow. I'm not sure that very many people really care, as long as the fish are there and are sustaining themselves. Goodness, I am very happy and feel fortunate to fish for wild brown trout, which certainly are not natives.)
 
I personally treat, generally speaking, wild brookies as "natives". I know there are some reestablished populations that would technically qualify as "wild", but if I'm catching brookies on mountain streams, etc., I just assume they're native.
 
Brook trout in PA can be both wild and native. Native in the sense that S. fontinalis, as a species, is native to eastern North America. However a distinction can be made between "native" brook tout and "heritage strain" brook trout. A heritage strain brook trout would be one whose genetic composition included no hatchery strain influence - a fish which descends from fish which swam in the natal stream in pre-Columbian times. A 'native" brook trout is more than likely, in PA at least, one whose ancestors arrived in the natal stream from a hatchery at some time in the past. These hatchery descended trout would be genetically distinct from the theoretical PA heritage strain. I am unaware of any heritage strain brook trout having been identified in PA. If anyone has any info on such trout, I would be interested in learning of it.
 
But what about the pellet or bread-ball fed, stream-bred trout in sections of waters, such as the Little J., Valley Creek, or Spring Creek? Are those "wild." They seem tame to me.

Native in what sense? Native to the stream, the region, etc.?
 
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