Size change?

[HopBack]

Actually I can.

My entire point since the beginning is raising the minimum size could benefit some select waters for brook trout, benefit brown trout in many waters and is practical since the PFBC hardly stocks 7" fish.

Thinking about it, I can think of 3 other larger watersheds, that hold brook trout year round, that would likely benefit from a minimum size increase. All 3 of I named people will flip out.

What YOU can't do is say it was good for 1 out of 10 brook trout waters so to hell with it, we will just apply the logic that it benefits nothing.

I don’t understand your last statement. YOU are saying that since it worked for kettle, let’s apply the regulations on all other brook trout streams even though the rest of the sample size was a failure.

 

[HopBack]

I do not “pick” studies. The brook trout enhancement program was not really a study. It’s important to know the difference between observational data and a real controlled study. I look at the cumulative whole of the studies I read and discuss with their authors and I follow the findings of the world’s most productive brook trout fisheries scientists.

Your focusing too hard on the water quality of tiny headwater streams which is important but the majority of peer reviewed fisheries science has shown that focusing management on tiny streams brook trout can stay in year round is a tragic mistake.

I welcome debate but people need to do a serious literature review to do so because we are arguing about already very well established fisheries science.

I’m sure you will find we agree more than disagree. I really just believe that an increase in minimum size length will do nothing for small to medium sized brook trout streams. There simply is not enough food in the watershed to sustain that kind of fishery.

I would actually welcome the change in regulation. It just appears that most on this thread think it’s the magic bullet and are convinced that people are hauling stringers full of 7 inch fish out of these streams.

If it does happen and say 5 years pass and these sample people will be asking , “why am I not catching 10” brook trout?”.

 

[Mike]

Average 308 or 313 yard sample size- hot garbage sample size

The primary out come and only outcome was 175mm brook trout or not. No other real benefits to pop were measured. -doesn’t tell you much

Pure demographic, dog *hit, data-no conservation genetics assessments

Thats observational data, not even a real study, no controls for stochastic events or other variables

You can print it out incase you run out of toilet paper, thats about its only use

I disagree with you about sampling station length not being representative. The standard stations are to be representative of the habitat in a samples stocked or wild trout section and are to be individually or in total 10% of the section length. This is certainly adequate and was supported by a nationally known fisheries professor at PSU when sampling protocols were developed for Pa trout streams. Since then and and based on the widths of the usual wild ST streams in Pa even the scientific literature says sample 40 times the mean wetted width. Forty times the mean wetted width on such streams is usually less than the 300+ meters sampled in PFBC sampling sites on ST streams.

As for examining the changes in legal ST abundance, of course that was a major focus or even THE focus because those in the angling public who pushed the agency into this study claimed that there was a statewide need for more conservative regulations to reduce harvest. The concern was overharvest as I recall. Despite the special regs I even remember some control streams (statewide reg streams) used for comparisons showing greater increases in legal fish than the ones under special regs.at times. Statewide means just that…statewide. So any stream with public access should have been eligible.

As for controls, there were a number of control streams. Controls are “the absence of a treatment effect.” The treatment effect was the special reg.

 

[Tom1980]

I don’t understand your last statement. YOU are saying that since it worked for kettle, let’s apply the regulations on all other brook trout streams even though the rest of the sample size was a failure.

Wrong.
And this is the last time I'll explain my position. Ultimately I have no control over the decision and if you are so passionate against it, contact the Commissioners.

IM saying it's practical for the PFBC to make the minimum size to the size of fish they stock. That is the entire purpose of the possible size change to begin with. IM also saying it will be benefit wild brown trout. Brown trout grow faster than wild brook trout. IM also saying it will benefit select brook trout waters. IM also saying Joe First Day and his family don't know a brown trout from a brook trout from a tiger trout from a rainbow trout. This is easily verified by going on social media and just looking at people post their catch of the latest 15" brook trout that is a brown trout.


Unless we want 1000000 different regs for 1000's of streams that Joe First Day won't understand, the practical thing for the PFBC to do, while also possibly growing larger wild trout and setting the minimum size to the minimum size of fish they stock IS TO DO IT ACROSS THE BOARD.

 

[troutbert]

I’m sure you will find we agree more than disagree. I really just believe that an increase in minimum size length will do nothing for small to medium sized brook trout streams. There simply is not enough food in the watershed to sustain that kind of fishery.

I would actually welcome the change in regulation. It just appears that most on this thread think it’s the magic bullet and are convinced that people are hauling stringers full of 7 inch fish out of these streams.

If it does happen and say 5 years pass and these sample people will be asking , “why am I not catching 10” brook trout?”.

If the size limit is changed to 9 inches, why would anyone expect more 10 inch brook trout?

I'd expect to see more 7 and 8 inchers.

 

[Mike]

If the size limit is changed to 9 inches, why would anyone expect more 10 inch brook trout?

I'd expect to see more 7 and 8 inchers.

Anglers would only see more 7-8 inchers if the harvest portion of total annual mortality was the limiting factor, ie it was so high that less overall trout in those length groups died year to year in total from combined fishing and natural mortalities. For fishing mortality to be limiting and for trout to respond favorably to a higher length limit one researcher in a presentation at the SE Fish and Wildlife Conference suggested that a 50% angling mortality rate was required. Whether the 50% rate was the exact “magic number” or not is not the point to me. The point is that the magnitude of angling mortality has to be very high. Based on the statewide wild trout stream creel census, we don’t have high angling mortality rates in unstocked wild trout streams on average; it’s just the opposite…they are low. High angling mortality of wild ST is not a statewide feature and if it occurs at all, it is limited to a specific small sub-set of streams.

As I have repeatedly said for over a decade, name the streams where overharvest is occurring. Address the issue on those streams rather than mismanaging all streams and impacting all harvest oriented or occasional harvesting anglers because of the actions of relatively few anglers on relatively few streams. Despite the frequency of my request here, only two streams have ever been named. The perceived problem of broad overharvest from unstocked wild trout stream sections is not one of reality based on emperical data from the angler use and harvest study, the results of the ST enhancement study, and the inability of anglers to produce a long list of streams where this problem is perceived to exist.

 

[Tom1980]

Anglers would only see more 7-8 inchers if the harvest portion of total annual mortality was the limiting factor, ie it was so high that less overall trout in those length groups died year to year in total from combined fishing and natural mortalities. For fishing mortality to be limiting and for trout to respond favorably to a higher length limit one researcher in a presentation at the SE Fish and Wildlife Conference suggested that a 50% angling mortality rate was required. Whether the 50% rate was the exact “magic number” or not is not the point to me. The point is that the magnitude of angling mortality has to be very high. Based on the statewide wild trout stream creel census, we don’t have high angling mortality rates in unstocked wild trout streams on average; it’s just the opposite…they are low. High angling mortality of wild ST is not a statewide feature and if it occurs at all, it is limited to a specific small sub-set of streams.

As I have repeatedly said for over a decade, name the streams where overharvest is occurring. Address the issue on those streams rather than mismanaging all streams and impacting all harvest oriented or occasional harvesting anglers because of the actions of relatively few anglers on relatively few streams. Despite the frequency of my request here, only two streams have ever been named. The perceived problem of broad overharvest from unstocked wild trout stream sections is not one of reality based on emperical data from the angler use and harvest study, the results of the ST enhancement study, and the inability of anglers to produce a long list of streams where this problem is perceived to exist.

So given that, are you implying that the PFBC making the minimum size 8-9" across all trout streams is mis managing those streams?
If so, please include what the regulations should look like so they can make a practical minimum size to the size of the fish stocked and yet, not mismanage wild trout streams and impact the occasional harvest oriented anglers or all harvest oriented anglers.

Ex:

Stocked trout waters: minimum size 9"
Unstocked waters minimum size 7"

Stocked wild trout streams 9"

stocked wild brown trout streams 9"

stocked wild brook trout streams 9" on stocked fish and 7" on brook trout.

Give a good example of how to achieve both. Then tell us if it can be easily followed by the public.

Could just stock smaller fish, they will love that 😂

It appears to me that the general angling public according to the harvest study favors catch and release and recognize a desire to do all things possible, even if only perceived , to protect the resource and create a culture that values wild trout.
I like the message it could send.

Stocked trout are provided to create angling opportunities and you are encouraged to harvest them. You can harvest wild trout but they are of more value, so we are creating a gap here because we as an agency and public as a whole value them above their stocked counterparts, so wild brook trout will be more difficult to harvest, they are native and of greatest value. Wild brown trout will need to be a little bigger.

Now just stop stocking over them and I can see "resource first" coming to light.


🤷But alas, the article quotes from the PFBC was clearly only about practicality in relation to the size of fish they stock.

 

[Roofin' Trouter]

I'm all for change. I feel like regulations should be evolving as more is learned. But, I'm skeptical anything will come of this for a few reasons. 8" seems possible but 9"? If/ when they collect data from co-op nurseries, will there be clubs that stock a good many trout under 9"? I'm thinking it's more than a few and the clubs are a vocal bunch.
I don't buy the whole"Opening Day crowd cant identify trout by species" as justification for anything. I'm sure they could figure it out . If not ,this should be one of the cases where "Being lazy costs money".
Are across the board regs really the best way? Watersheds in different parts of the system are going through different things. So why should they fall under the same regulations? So pretty much I have questions not answers. I see more brookies getting grabbed by herons than put on a stringer these days. I can't say when the last time I saw an angler filling one of the creels with measurements that shrunk over time so 7" on the creel was really 6".
Maybe I'm wrong about the size of fish some of the clubs stock . My buddy helped one of these clubs stock the fish. He would joke that they put "bait and a few big ones" into the box for him to float down through. Maybe that club was unique?
About a month ago I was looking for something to do. I found out that DCNR hosts nature events at state parks. I haven't found any that mention brook trout specifically. Did I not look at the right parks? I think cricks that flow through campgrounds would seem like a likely place that wild trout harvest occurs more so . So maybe a chance to learn may discourage harvest?

 

[Fish Sticks]

I disagree with you about sampling station length not being representative. The standard stations are to be representative of the habitat in a samples stocked or wild trout section and are to be individually or in total 10% of the section length. This is certainly adequate and was supported by a nationally known fisheries professor at PSU when sampling protocols were developed for Pa trout streams. Since then and and based on the widths of the usual wild ST streams in Pa even the scientific literature says sample 40 times the mean wetted width. Forty times the mean wetted width on such streams is usually less than the 300+ meters sampled in PFBC sampling sites on ST streams.

As for examining the changes in legal ST abundance, of course that was a major focus or even THE focus because those in the angling public who pushed the agency into this study claimed that there was a statewide need for more conservative regulations to reduce harvest. The concern was overharvest as I recall. Despite the special regs I even remember some control streams (statewide reg streams) used for comparisons showing greater increases in legal fish than the ones under special regs.at times. Statewide means just that…statewide. So any stream with public access should have been eligible.

As for controls, there were a number of control streams. Controls are “the absence of a treatment effect.” The treatment effect was the special reg.

The problem with the sample size is that it does not account for source sink dynamics. For instance if your goal is to make a bigger brook trout that tiny sample size assumes around roughly 310 yrds assumes the fish your trying to create with the management will remain in said habitat when they reach that size. We know brook trout capitalize to an extent on rich downstream food resources depending on physical and biological barriers. Even the same stream lower down could have better habitat for larger fish creating an intersection source sink dynamic within the stream.

If this was some known mostly sedimentary fish like some darters are believed to be then the protocol might make more sense but not for brook trout. Shannon whites novel river scape genetics completely refuted the idea that management actions in one part if a watershed can be effectively measured in just that section only. Its almost verbatim in her paper.

As for the control stream that still does not look at confounding variables that could be effecting control/study stream based on temp/precipitation patterns between streams. There are statistical models one could apply to these other variables to present to weigh their effects on the primary outcome. For example neural network was used to link different variables to the primary outcome in this study.

Broad-Scale Patterns of Brook Trout Responses to Introduced Brown Trout in New York — EBTJV

Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis and Brown Trout Salmo trutta are valuable sport fish that coexist in many parts of the world due to stocking introductions. Causes for the decline of Brook Trout within their native range are not clear but include competition with Brown Trout, habitat...

easternbrooktrout.org

 

[Mike]

Apparently you a the words representative habitat. Because a downstream area has habitat type that is isolated and exceptionally good for larger fish, that doesn’t make it representative. It is somewhat frequent that non-representative habitat is at or close to the mouth of a stream. It can either be non-representative because it is better or because it is poorer. Even in Area 6, which is not exactly a famed ST region, we would see this.

You are not likely to know this from sampling a few waters, but on my grand scale electrofishing more than single 300-350 m sites within a two mile sections of wild brook trout streams becomes extremely redundant in terms of trout abundance and length distributions. I’ve done so numerous times in order to meet the 10% of section length sampling protocol. You don’t learn anything or much of anything new. Additionally, when a section is 6 km long, for example, then protocols typically involve setting up two 300-300+ meter sampling sites…and so on.

Likewise when you electrofish warmwater streams. In those cases sampling 10% of a section’s length is overkill. Five percent, or one 300 m site for every 4 mi much more pragmatic. The streams don’t change on a linear basis very rapidly in part because of reduced gradient. I did the 10% on warmwater streams for years and it was overkill.


As for controls used in the ST reg study, to my knowledge they were geographically close enough to treatment streams such that weather patterns would have affected both.

In addition streams were necessarily spread across the state into streams where selection criteria were met, one of which I believe was public land.

Finally, I believe the results were published in one of the top fisheries journals and the editors/reviewers, who are PHD fisheries professionals, apparently did not have your concerns or it would not have been published in that journal.

 

[Fish Sticks]

Apparently you missed the words representative habitat. Because a downstream area has habitat that is isolated and exceptionally good for larger fish, that doesn’t make it representative.

As for controls used in the study, to my knowledge they were geographically close enough to treatment streams such that weather patterns would have affected both.

In addition streams were necessarily spread across the state into streams where selection criteria were met, one of which I believe was public land.

Finally, I believe the results were published in one of the top fisheries journals and the editors/reviewers, who are PHD fisheries professionals, apparently did not have your concerns.

Thats my point that weather patterns and stochastic events WOULD have effected both streams and could have had an overwhelming effect on both sets artificially showing the same result in some of the regs and control streams.

The other thing I would like to point out is that I am aware of WHERE it was published but maybe you should also be aware of WHEN it was published……before this(which are not MY concerns. Heres the quote)

“Accordingly, brook trout management efforts are rarely put into a metapopulation context, and the significance of conservation actions or disturbance events are gener- ally considered to be restricted to a single stream. How- ever, results of the BGR model question the validity of these assumptions for brook trout”

https://www.thetroutlook.com/uploads/8/2/0/5/82050160/white_et_al_a_novel_quantiative_framework_for_riverscape_genetics.pdf

Study 2020 was 6 years after the paper published by Jason and Ty wagner and Ty wagner is on this one with the above quote as well!! Same expert 6 years later!

may have been valid based on assumptions in 2014 mike but wince then we have found out a lot more about brook trout life histories and movement and the “representative” reaches are not representative of the down stream larger habitat in streams class A’s feed into in most cases.

 

[jifigz]

This thread is accomplishing nothing. Changing a harvest length in PA to 9" will also accomplish nothing.

Most people that care about wild trout practice C&R. I don't believe brook trout populations will change much nor will the overall size of the fish change just from a 2" increase in harvest length. Under the current regs some streams have a fair share of larger brook trout and others don't. I don't think harvest has anything to do with this, but quality of each individual stream does. My opinions are only pertaining to increasing the legal harvest limit, not stocking over brookies, browns crowding them out, etc, so please don't twist my post into some meaning that isn't there.

My opinion on the situation is this and this is the only meaning to my post: increasing the size limit/harvest length statewide will have no noticeable effect on abundance of larger brook trout statewide. I do not believe harvest or intense angling pressure is a large limiting factor to smaller brook trout.

 

[Fish Sticks]

This thread is accomplishing nothing. Changing a harvest length in PA to 9" will also accomplish nothing.

Most people that care about wild trout practice C&R. I don't believe brook trout populations will change much nor will the overall size of the fish change just from a 2" increase in harvest length. Under the current regs some streams have a fair share of larger brook trout and others don't. I don't think harvest has anything to do with this, but quality of each individual stream does. My opinions are only pertaining to increasing the legal harvest limit, not stocking over brookies, browns crowding them out, etc, so please don't twist my post into some meaning that isn't there.

My opinion on the situation is this and this is the only meaning to my post: increasing the size limit/harvest length statewide will have no noticeable effect on abundance of larger brook trout statewide. I do not believe harvest or intense angling pressure is a large limiting factor to smaller brook trout.

Maryland DNR would beg to differ and we don’t have the conservation genetics data to make that statement. but even pretending c and r had ZERO effect that helped brook trout the educational value itself when it comes to the public’s acceptance and advocacy for some(ANY) form of sensible management of these fish would have a benefit in itself and if no one is harvesting them then what are we afraid of?

 

[jifigz]

Maryland DNR would beg to differ and we don’t have the conservation genetics data to make that statement. but even pretending c and r had ZERO effect that helped brook trout the educational value itself when it comes to the public’s acceptance and advocacy for some(ANY) form of sensible management of these fish would have a benefit in itself and if no one is harvesting them then what are we afraid of?

This is tiring. Didn't I say not to infer meanings that I didn't imply? This is why I stated my simple message and opinion at the end of post #72. Never once did I say I did not support C&R regulations statewide for brook trout, nor did I say I did not support a length increase. I said it is my opinion that it will make no noticeable difference in the size of fish we see statewide in our brook trout streams. Go ahead and increase the size limit and make it C&R, great idea.

 

[Swattie87]

You are all weirdos!

 

[jifigz]

Stocked or wild? Caught yesterday, 8/1/23, from a stream not stocked with brookies.....I mean it was stocked..... Right? But it's a nice looking stockie......

 

[jifigz]

I vote stocked!

Here, here!

 

[jifigz]

@tomgamber feel free to post the same thing you did in Post #33 again. It is fitting since we have had this conversation 1,000,000 times, too.

Man, posting like this is a great way to get your post numbers up....make you look like a really committed forum member.

 

[wildtrout2]

I vote stocked!

Me too. Those fins tell the story.

 

[Mike]

Thats my point that weather patterns and stochastic events WOULD have effected both streams and could have had an overwhelming effect on both sets artificially showing the same result in some of the regs and control streams.

And now you are making my point…that harsh environmental effects and habitat override the effects of regs and harvest in almost all unstocked Pa freestone wild ST streams. Troutbert may remember that I said that in my 2002 Pa trout summit presentation. Changing the statewide regs will be insignificant in the vast majority of these streams. Find the rare ones where overharvest is problematic and address those specifically. Leave the other ones and the anglers who utilize them alone.

Mike added this:
For those who have a concern about the impact of angling on the fish entering the stocked receiving streams of the Class A’s, suggest that creel surveys be designed to measure spring wild ST harvest from those seasonally warmer streams similar to the one that was designed for Bald Eagle wild BT in the lower adult stocked section.