New trout plans in the works??

[afishinado]

foxtrapper1972 wrote:
afishinado said-"Believe it or not, weening anglers off stocked trout and promoting, enhancing and just allowing wild trout to grow in our streams will make PA a better place to fish in the future."

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Please explain this. How in the world can shifting the mass of current trout fishermen ( who rely on stocked fish mostly) (and enjoy killing them) over to wild trout possibly make PA a better place to fish? Even if the wild trout resource were somehow to be enhanced (not sure how?) there is just too much damage that would happen to the fish.

I've suspected they are trying to exploit wild trout fishing in this state for a while now. More articles and info on their site etc. It's so much cheaper to advertise the great wild trout fishing than to raise trout. And considering the trend of less regulations not more I don't see them making any NO KILL places anytime soon. Let's face it there are a limited number of decent wild trout streams in PA....(not gemmie streams) and a very limited number of streams capable of sustaining a really good population of wild fish under the best of protections or enhancements.

Many, if not most of the trout anglers, well maybe a better word would be anglers that fish for trout, will not bother to pursue the smaller and more difficult wild trout in the smaller and more difficult streams. Take some time and observe the average Joe out there trout fishing in stocked streams, especially early in the season.

This is really a shame in a way, because many of us, myself included, started fishing for trout stocked streams with bait and spin outfits. At some point I moved on to flyfishing and never looked back, but I still rely on lessons learned and skills from the past. Without stocked streams in my area, I may not have started fishing at all.

Remember, the whole dilemma facing the Commish is the less they stock, the less licenses they sell so they must stock less...and the whole thing keeps spinning in a circle.

If the revenue stream for the PFBC crashes, it would serve no one at all. All angling PA would suffer and there would be less and less people out there to give a shat about the streams and rivers and fish, like many of us on here do.

So there is really no easy answer or clear way forward. Mr. Arway has a tough job ahead of him.

I blame the politicians (and the lawyers!) If they quit meddling and just allowed a nominal increase in licenses to cover increased costs like Mr. Arway suggested, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It really wouldn't effect license sales, and if it were enacted ten years ago, as it was proposed by the Commish at that time, our $30 resident license fee (with a trout stamp) would now be $40. That $1 a year would represent a $10 increase in ten years time. That's a 33% increase in revenues.

Instead, the pollies have a noose around the purse strings and are starving the Commish and in turn the anglers throughout the State. Let's not forget, buying a fishing license is completely voluntary and the anglers elect to buy or not buy a license every year. A fishing license valid for 365 days of fishing is a bargain, even at $40 a year.

 

[RyanR]

foxtrapper1972 wrote:
afishinado said-"Believe it or not, weening anglers off stocked trout and promoting, enhancing and just allowing wild trout to grow in our streams will make PA a better place to fish in the future."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please explain this. How in the world can shifting the mass of current trout fishermen ( who rely on stocked fish mostly) (and enjoy killing them) over to wild trout possibly make PA a better place to fish? Even if the wild trout resource were somehow to be enhanced (not sure how?) there is just too much damage that would happen to the fish.

I've suspected they are trying to exploit wild trout fishing in this state for a while now. More articles and info on their site etc. It's so much cheaper to advertise the great wild trout fishing than to raise trout. And considering the trend of less regulations not more I don't see them making any NO KILL places anytime soon. Let's face it there are a limited number of decent wild trout streams in PA....(not gemmie streams) and a very limited number of streams capable of sustaining a really good population of wild fish under the best of protections or enhancements.

You're speaking strictly from the viewpoint that stocking is vital to a quality trout fishing experience. Something that has largely been imprinted on us here in PA (and much of the East) for generations by our fathers, grandfathers and in the halls of nearly every Rod & Gun Club. It's become so engrained most of us are afraid to even think there could be quality trout fishing without stocking or that without it all of our wild trout streams will become decimated. There are a number of states where that has proven to not be the case, states that don't even have the sheer number of stream miles that PA has. If our stocking program was to undergo significant changes so that trout fishing in PA was less dependent on hatchery fish, with proper regulation of those wild trout waters the fisheries could still thrive even with increased fishing pressure on some of those streams. Let's be honest the majority of signiticant trout angling pressure in PA takes place over a couple of weekends in April to maybe early May and that's about it.

 

[Mike]

RyanR, waters don't have to be ATW's to be stocked by private clubs or co-op's.

 

[Acristickid]

I just paid $98.50 for an ID license. In this day and age of $75 single game tickets to pro games and $4 coffees , this is a joke. Raise the license fees. Damn politics.

 

[RyanR]

Mike wrote:
RyanR, waters don't have to be ATW's to be stocked by private clubs or co-op's.

Can they just stock designated Class A or Wild Trout Stream sections will nilly then? Do these clubs need to obtain a permit that also lists what stream section they will stock? If none of this is the case then why is the PFBC so adamant about being sure that the relatively miniscule TIC releases of fingerling trout ONLY occur within designated ATW sections and not Class A or Wild Trout sections?

 

[tomitrout]

Can someone do me a favor? Reading Afish's post up there where he speaks to budget allocations, is there an easy to read pie chart or something that spells out how the PFBC's budget is chopped up? Pieces for the hatchery system & stocking/access point-ramps/law enforcement/admin/etc....

And is there also an easy to read chart that shows the ratios of trout & Erie stamps sold vs total sold? And an income chart, license sales/state funds/other funding..

anybody have a link a handy?

 

[Gone4Day]

Here’s a summary from Arway:
Straight Talk
The real budget buster is annual retirement expenditures are going up over 4X in the next couple years.

 

[afishinado]

tomitrout wrote:
Can someone do me a favor? Reading Afish's post up there where he speaks to budget allocations, is there an easy to read pie chart or something that spells out how the PFBC's budget is chopped up? Pieces for the hatchery system & stocking/access point-ramps/law enforcement/admin/etc....

And is there also an easy to read chart that shows the ratios of trout & Erie stamps sold vs total sold? And an income chart, license sales/state funds/other funding..

anybody have a link a handy?

I have nothing that's easy to read, but here is the complete budget analysis of both revenue and expenditures with all the breakdowns you requested.

http://fishandboat.com/promo/funding/marcellus/LBFC_AuditReport.pdf

John Arway commented in an interview that $16 - $17 of every fishing license sold goes to the stocking program.

Here is a quote from the above report in the link:

The expenditure by the state fish hatcheries (which produce both trout and other species for stocking) is substantial, and the operation of the hatcheries constituted 57 percent of the Bureau’s expenditures with more than 60 percent of the Bureau’s authorized personnel assigned to hatchery operations.


So it is obvious that any significant savings in the future will have to come from the stocking program.

 

[Eccles]

afishinado wrote:
The FBC should, and surely will continue the trout stocking program. There are many streams that cannot support wild trout and should be stocked to give anglers a chance to trout fish.

I don't get this commonly stated point of view.

Why on earth should anyone have a chance to catch trout in water they wouldn't naturally exist in?

Surely the same argument could then be made for other species. Why not stock largemouth bass in trout water that wouldn't normally support them. Or we could put muskies in Penns Creek - limited season put and take.

Just because we can put trout in non-trout waters doesn't mean that we should.

 

[afishinado]

Eccles wrote:

afishinado wrote:
The FBC should, and surely will continue the trout stocking program. There are many streams that cannot support wild trout and should be stocked to give anglers a chance to trout fish.

I don't get this commonly stated point of view.

Why on earth should anyone have a chance to catch trout in water they wouldn't naturally exist in?

Surely the same argument could then be made for other species. Why not stock largemouth bass in trout water that wouldn't normally support them. Or we could put muskies in Penns Creek - limited season put and take.

Just because we can put trout in non-trout waters doesn't mean that we should.

Stocked streams near many of the urban areas attract anglers that do not have decent fishing close by. Many anglers buy a fishing license in order to fish local streams stocked with trout.

Do not forget that the Commish exists to serve anglers that buy licenses, and a large part of what they do is for "customer satisfaction." I agree with this policy, but pleasing the customer must be tempered with doing what's right in preserving and protecting the resource.

At this point, given the limited funds and increased costs, too much, as a percentage of available revenue, is being spent on pure customer satisfaction / stocking. Therefore, the stocking program has to be cut to allow the other functions effecting the resource to be funded properly.

 

[troutbert]

Eccles wrote:

afishinado wrote:
The FBC should, and surely will continue the trout stocking program. There are many streams that cannot support wild trout and should be stocked to give anglers a chance to trout fish.

I don't get this commonly stated point of view.

Why on earth should anyone have a chance to catch trout in water they wouldn't naturally exist in?

Surely the same argument could then be made for other species. Why not stock largemouth bass in trout water that wouldn't normally support them. Or we could put muskies in Penns Creek - limited season put and take.

Just because we can put trout in non-trout waters doesn't mean that we should.

Do you think the closing of all the hatcheries is actually on the table? Is this being discussed? If so, by who?

I've heard no one in the PFBC or PA legislator or any citizen group advocating this.

But is there something bubbling beneath the surface that we haven't heard about yet?

 

[Maurice]

Back when Big Spring closed due to the inability to meet the discharge requirements of the NPDES permit 800,000+ stocked trout were taken out of the stocking rotation. That took the total trout production from 5 million down to 4.2m (including co-ops). This was the single biggest strategic move to increase the biomass and range of wild trout in Pennsylvania. Numerous streams were taken off the stocking list and fewer inseason stockings were scheduled to accommodate the shortfall.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, the numbers of license buyers also fell as well.

So what we learned from this is that attrition is the wild trout management plan executed by the PFBC. Their inability to increase revenue and further reduce revenue by $800k with the $1.00 discount will be felt down the road....and eventually more hatcheries will close, streams will be removed and more wild trout will be available.

It will just take a little longer for the wheels to fall off the cart than we would like but they will fall off

 

[Acristickid]

From Pittsburgh Tribune Review


The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission wants to increase the cost of a trout stamp. That’s a given.
But by how much?
Officials with the commission haven’t crafted any specific proposal yet, but they did give lawmakers some ideas on a starting point.
Executive director John Arway addressed members of the state Senate game and fisheries committees recently. He told them that the money raised by selling stamps has never completely covered the cost of raising and stocking trout.
The problem is, it’s now covering less than ever.
In 1991, when the $5 trout stamp was created, the commission sold nearly 738,000 of them, generating $3.7 million. That covered 57 percent of the cost of the stocked trout program, Arway said.
The price of a trout stamp went up to $8 in 2005, the only time it’s ever increased.
Yet, in 2014, the commission sold just 594,000. That generated $4.7 million, but covered only 46 percent of the cost of trout program.
If nothing changes – if the number of trout anglers stays steady, and costs continue to rise as expected – trout stamp revenues will cover just 30 percent of the cost of raising fish by 2021, Arway said.
That’s not sustainable, he said.
The commission has considered some options, though.
If the price of trout stamps and trout/Lake Erie combo stamps increased by $5 starting in 2017, the commission would make an additional $1.7 million, Arway said. That would get revenues to the point they covered 49 percent of the $13 million cost of stocking trout that year.
If trout stamps and combo stamps went up by $8 each, that would generate about $2.6 million and pay for 56 percent of program costs.
Then he rolled out what appears to be the commission’s favored plan. That would be increasing the price of stamps once, then automatically increasing them each year – albeit by a smaller amount, say $1 — for four more years.
“Without the annual increases, higher costs would quickly erode the percentage of the trout program that could be covered by the permit fees, and we would soon need another multiple-dollar increase,” Arway said.
Lawmakers asked if the commission has approached sportsmen with those ideas, and what they had to say.
Arway said the commission has not proposed any particular fee to sportsmen. But the state’s organized anglers have “given us conceptual approval” for moving forward, he added.
“This is the first time we’ve talked about what different funding scenarios mean relative to what our needs are,” he said.
Now the debate will begin.
Some anglers will drop out of the ranks if prices increase. That’s the way things always go.
But what’s the alternative? Fewer stocked fish?
That won’t make anyone happy either.