PA trout stocking opinion article

[riverwhy]

If it has been a few years since you fished it how do you know it still has Brookies? Looks worse every year. Now that I am retired though I have no excuse not to fish it and find out!

 

[tomgamber]

Now that I am retired though I have no excuse not to fish it and find out!

That sounds like an opportunity rather than a problem.

 

[Swattie87]

If it has been a few years since you fished it how do you know it still has Brookies? Looks worse every year. Now that I am retired though I have no excuse not to fish it and find out!

I suppose I don’t, in so much as I also haven’t fished the Little J in a few years, but I’m pretty confident there are still wild Brown Trout there.

Just going off of my catch ratios over the last 10 years on Segloch, I’ve caught more Brookies than Browns. It’s close to 50/50, but, I’ve caught more Brookies. Admittedly most of those outings are toward the older end of 10 years ago, but still. It wasn’t like you’d fish it and catch 20 Browns, and a random Brookie maybe every other outing. There were still at least decent numbers of (small) Brookies, and the Browns, as noted in this thread have been there a long, long time. I find it unlikely that in the last 5 years the Browns finally extirpated all the Brookies after all this time. There may be more Browns, and there’s certainly more Browns in terms of biomass, and the Brookies are easier to catch, which may skew my catch ratios, but it’s not like it was uncommon to catch a Brookie there. There were days it fished like junk (low/clear/full of sand) and I didn’t catch anything, but when I caught fish, I caught Brookies too.

The article was constructed through a certain viewpoint that makes it seem like the Brookies are gone. I find that highly unlikely though. I’ll fish it this Winter, catch a Brookie and post a pic, if it really needs to be confirmed.

Edit: I think it’s telling that the parties behind the story don’t cite a stream survey indicating there are no Brook Trout left. I assume if they had that card to play, it would’ve made its way into the article, and since it didn’t, I’m guessing (but not certain) they don’t have that. As has played out on here already, their viewpoint does not seem to be the majority opinion of most Trout anglers in PA, and why I think they could get more traction for their efforts with more middle of the road and less polarizing approaches. This article definitely had a spin to it…Figured that out as soon as I read the Lanternfly analogy at the beginning.

 

[troutbert]

He talked about the issue of stocking DOWNSTREAM of native brook trout populations.

But did not mention at all ending stocking DIRECTLY ON TOP OF native brook trout populations, which is very widespread.