Pennsylvania Trout

[NewSal]

Just sharing a recent article from Fly Fisherman -

'Pennsylvania Trout'

 

[SteveG]

A pop-up was keeping me from reading the whole article. I've never fished down in the Southeastern part of the state, and didn't know that Valley was all catch and release. It's a shame it takes something like a chemical spill for them to impose a designation that seems to have a habit of providing great wild trout fishing.

 

[troutbert]

Spring Creek's management was also changed to wild trout management and catch-and-release by chemical contamination.

Before that, it was stocked with 19,000 trout per year, and the limit was 8 trout per day.

Very few people thought of it as a wild trout stream back then.

I've read some of the older writings about Spring Creek. For example there was a section on Spring Creek in a book called "100 Pennsylvania Trout Streams and How to Fish Them" which was published in around 1963.

The article was several pages long, and also included descriptions of Bald Eagle Creek.

There was no mention of either stream holding wild trout. It didn't say there weren't wild trout either.

There simply was no mention of wild trout. I think that it was simply not on peoples' radars back then. Which seems hard to fathom, because they must have caught juvenile wild trout, smaller than the Fish Commission stocked. And also saw brown trout spawning in the fall. How could they not have realized that there were wild trout in the streams?

 

[SteveG]

Some definitely knew, as my grandfather would identify them to me when I was young. But as a whole, I think the unlimited harvest placed on them reduces their value in the eyes of most anglers. There are plenty of anglers now who have who still have no clue that the streams they're fishing have wild trout. Without fail, at least once a year while fishing the Breeches in the Fall, a local will drive by and yell that "they haven't stocked for months".

 

[afishinado]

Agree with all above.

Back-in-the-day nearly every fish of legal size went on the stringer or in the creel. The number of wild fish of legal size could never satisfy all the anglers that fished those streams.....therefore they were stocked.

Now with C&R regs, it's possible to have a wild trout stream that's heavily fished, but never "fished out."

 

[SteveG]

^ which is why it's so frustrating since PFBC's previous data claimed a high percentage of anglers who are c&r. It'd be nice if they started designating more c&r water to mirror the responses from license buyers.

 

[tomgamber]

SteveG wrote:
^ which is why it's so frustrating since PFBC's previous data claimed a high percentage of anglers who are c&r. It'd be nice if they started designating more c&r water to mirror the responses from license buyers.

You have it backward. If everyone told them they were catch and release there would be no reason to designate any water as such because everyone would be releasing fish. You have to tell them you keep everything you catch. Then they will designate waters that make you return fish. :-?