Stocked Trout

[afishinado]

Do they still have a place?

I (and a lot of you I'm sure)) grew up a lot like the author did in his piece....

https://www.hatchmag.com/blog/ode-stocker/7714818

 

[Nymph-wristed]

Living not 2 miles from Philly most of my life, I have love for the ugly things, and they are not as ugly as I remember them being, either. With bait and spinner guys releasing them in good shape (most of the time) there are so many left into June and July now that as long as water temps stay good, I can sneak out to scratch an itch on a moments notice. I am teaching my dad to flyfish on stockies this year, and I still take my son out a few time each spring.

I ran into a teacher with 10 to 12 elementary school kids on a Wednesday in Fairmount Park. He was teaching them to fish, and I spent about 30 minutes with them retying and fishing out snags and tangles. For we (sub)urbanites, it is still a good way to hook a few new anglers each year.

 

[PennKev]

The views of the author seem to be exactly in line with many of us on the forum. Stocked trout have a place, it is just not in the same streams as wild trout. Our wild trout fisheries should be allowed (and helped) to reach their full potential, and many places will remain that can still be stocked.

 

[BrookieChaser]

Stocked trout are for children and old people. Hatchery trout should only be put in lakes where it's easy access for both cohorts to fish for them.

 

[troutbert]

PennKev wrote:
The views of the author seem to be exactly in line with many of us on the forum. Stocked trout have a place, it is just not in the same streams as wild trout. Our wild trout fisheries should be allowed (and helped) to reach their full potential, and many places will remain that can still be stocked.

Exactly.

The article is arguing against a position that (almost) no one is taking.

Very, very few people in PA advocate ending the hatchery program. And most of the people who do aren't fishermen.

 

[KenU]

Some years ago I was at a TU meeting in Latrobe. The late Ross Huhn (a PFBC commissioner at the time) was at the meeting, as he often was. Ross and I had a conversation as we left the meeting. I suggested that the PFBC confine stocking to streams that could not support wild trout on a sustained basis. Ross agreed, but said that would be impossible to do in the NC area because almost all the streams there hold fine wild brook and brown trout populations and therefore would not be stocked. And therein lays the problem. What this article is saying is great. But until our legislators quit pressuring the PFBC to stock, especially in their districts, it will continue this way.

 

[allthingsfishing]

Stocked trout are for children and old people. Hatchery trout should only be put in lakes where it's easy access for both cohorts to fish for them.

So, old people can't chase wild trout? I resemble that remark.

 

[wildtrout2]

PennKev wrote:
The views of the author seem to be exactly in line with many of us on the forum. Stocked trout have a place, it is just not in the same streams as wild trout. Our wild trout fisheries should be allowed (and helped) to reach their full potential, and many places will remain that can still be stocked.

Exactly how I feel, and I shared that when I did their survey.

 

[Nymph-wristed]

Is stocking still a factor in the access question, I wonder?

Does the fact that the PFBC stocks a place like Bald Eagle or Big Fishing, just as one example of many, maintain access to those stretches that are not public water? Local fishermen soak bait for a month, and in return you get to throw a streamer at a monster brown in June? Or is that left over from another time?

Also, publishing maps of Class A and wild streams has resulted in a lot of posted signs in my experience. I am 50 years old and fished some creeks in NEPA, for example, long before interactive maps, and I see a lot more postings. Coincidence or par for the course as you age, or both? In other words, I think the PFBC threads the needle, not an easy thing to pull off while being funded by licences from all sorts of interests.

Do TU chapters stock over wild fish for the same reason? Make the experience easier for some who would not fish the same creeks if they had a Class C wild population (or for older members, their bread and butter as far as membership)?

So many questions, and only one (retired and hopefully fishing) Mike!

 

[troutbert]

Nymph-wristed wrote:
Is stocking still a factor in the access question, I wonder?

In some places, yes.

But stocking over wild trout, including native brook trout, is very common on public forest lands, where there are no access issues.

The trend towards posting is mostly unrelated to stocking or not stocking. It has to with the changes in land ownership.

 

[Bamboozle]

I will never forget how hard it was for me to catch my first trout.

Week after week of being skunked at just about every "crick" in Delaware County and a few in Chesco, (not to mention the Wissahickon) using what was then the magic bullet, salmon eggs on a tiny gold hook.

The "cherry popping" took place after about 10+ trips at French Creek in Warwick Township when I caught four fish on the spinners I carried, but had no confidence in until a guy on the other side of the creek humbled me into asking him "how/what?"

I still make a few trips every year to the open water on "Frenchie" (as I call it) to relive those days. A week ago, I helped a couple of kids using Power Bait and seeing the thrill when they caught a few, (while I was being skunked on flies) was a delight!!

I know that we aren’t talking about eliminating stocking, but growing up in southeast PA, I would never want to deny anybody anywhere those thrills or sweet memories like mine, even if the circumstances are less than the ideal I now set for myself.

I have come full circle to appreciate the place that stockers occupy in the hearts of many, including me.

 

[Canoetripper]

I didn't read the article yet but I will. I have caught a lot of stocked trout and still do and will. I release them all now to catch them another day at the R&G Club where I spend most of my time fishing, hunting, and just enjoying being outdoors in the woods.

I grew up in the borough of Camp Hill, PA and spent a lot of time fishing the Yellow Breeches and Clark's Creek among many others in SC PA.

My favorite thing to do is a canoe/camping trip, which is mostly warm water fishing on rivers big enough to float a fully loaded canoe.

The Delaware River is my home river and I have canoed most of it from the West Branch to Trenton, NJ. I haven't done this since the early 90's but once lived in Washington Crossing, and my uncle had a cottage in Wayne County so I know this river very well.

I bought my canoe in 1984 and have years worth of experience in PA, NC, VA, and WV.

My two favorite canoe trips are the very upper Greenbrier River and South Fork of the Potomac River, which are both in West Virginia. This water gets too low and warm to support wild fish. I am glad that the WV DNR stocks them so I can catch trout for a camp fire grilled trout for supper followed by a bacon greased soaked trout breakfast.

I don't care if those trout are stocked since they will eventually die from warm water or predators. It is amazing how good stocked trout can taste when you are cold, wet, and have been drinking beer on a three day/two night canoe trip.

BTW, 98% of those trout are/were caught on silver-bladed Mepps spinners without the squirrel tail. It is just a lot easier to fish with a 5' ultra-light spinning rod from a canoe than it is with two people fishing fly rods at the same time.

Every one has different reasons for their outdoor recreation. I totally understand why one likes to fish for natives or the challenge of wild trout. Same thing with hunting.

I like to be in the wilderness all by myself with no public roads. I can do that on the upper Greenbrier River and Smoke Hole section of the South Branch of the Potomac River both of which are in WV.

This is also why I love the R&G club in the Poconos.

I had to retire my canoe but didn't want to get rid of it so I gave it to jifigz on this board since I know he lives on the Juniata River and will use it since I really can't anymore.

 

[Prospector]

KenU wrote:
..... I suggested that the PFBC confine stocking to streams that could not support wild trout on a sustained basis. Ross agreed, but said that would be impossible to do in the NC area because almost all the streams there hold fine wild brook and brown trout populations and therefore would not be stocked. And therein lays the problem......

I agree. This is a difficult subject. I don’t like to see stocked fish in Cross Fork Creek, but I think the state puts only rainbows in so at least they aren’t impacting the gene pool. However the bigger rainbows do get the better lies and are eating small wild fish.

Aside from the state, I believe some co-op nurseries in the area are stocking brookies in Cross Fork, which is a gene pool issue. Do you make it illegal for co-ops to stock certain waters?

I seem to remember a time 25-30 years ago when all stocking of Cross Fork Creek was stopped and the fishing was terrible. So it basically went unused as a resource. There was a belief, at the time, that poaching played a role in the collapse as a fishery, but I’m not totally buying that.

A second scenario is a stream like Kettle that has a very sustainable wild population in its upper reaches but a lower section that gets too warm to maintain a significant trout population without stocking. Do you manage this in sections like they are doing today and are the wild trout advocates on here willing to make that distinction? Would there be some sort of biomass calculation to determine ability to stock or is it as strict as one wild trout found makes it off limits to stocking.

There are a few wrinkles to deal with. I find myself on both sides at times.

 

[JerryC]

Most of the streams, except Valley Creek, are stocked. I have know problem with the state stocking streams where the trout can't reproduce. I did learn that the state isn't the only ones stocking the Wissahickon. I was out for a morning walk with my church group on Earth Day and on the way back at Wise's Mill Road there a group of students and their teacher sitting on the bank. He was asking them questions about what they saw on/in the creek. In front of him there was a large blue barrel which was their biology project. They had raised brown trout from eggs and were releasing the three dozen fingerling trout that had survived into the creek. It's a project the teacher has been running for several years. You have to wonder about the trout's survival chances. As I thought about it, a
mystery was solved. A couple of years ago when I was fishing the creek later in the year I'd caught a couple of brown trout about 4 inches long, still had parr stripes on them. Were stocked browns reproducing in the Wissahickon? Apparently not but it looks like a least some the fingerlings had survived.

 

[Nymph-wristed]

troutbert wrote:

Nymph-wristed wrote:
Is stocking still a factor in the access question, I wonder?

In some places, yes.

But stocking over wild trout, including native brook trout, is very common on public forest lands, where there are no access issues.

The trend towards posting is mostly unrelated to stocking or not stocking. It has to with the changes in land ownership.

Thanks, troutbert. I have also wondered why some creeks only get rainbows, while a creek like the Bushkil in Eastonl gets stocked browns over wild browns. Seems no rhyme or reason, at times.

 

[silverfox]

I think there has to be some criteria for what streams are stocked based on the amount of reproduction that is happening along with water quality parameters.

Some streams that have natural reproduction are limited in the amount of fish the stream can produce by the poor water quality. So to stop stocking every stream that has any natural reproduction isn't really the answer.

On the other side of that coin are streams with Class A sections. Even where the downstream portion of the stream may get too warm, if the other water parameters (pH, KH, ODO, TDS etc.) can support a Class A population, then no portion of that stream should be stocked. The simple argument in that case is that the only detrimental effect on the wild fish population in the stream is stocking and habitat. Why harm a stream like that?

Further down the rabbit hole is the issue of trout movement. How many of you have caught rainbows on the little J? I know I have. Not often, but they're there. That illustrates that stocked fish travel for miles and miles through stream systems. Here's a study the PFBC did to find out why people weren't catching fish on opening day on some NE streams. https://www.fishandboat.com/Fish/Fisheries/TroutPlan/Documents/trout_movement.pdf One tagged rainbow was caught 13 miles from where it was stocked.

If they would just reallocate the stockings from Class A and Class A capable streams to streams that can't support Class A due to water quality parameters, I think they would make everyone happy. Nobody wants to eliminate stocking, just move where the fish are stocked. I still think they need to add harvest regs on the Class A streams though. Slot limits or whatever.

 

[outsider]

BrookieChaser wrote:
Stocked trout are for children and old people. Hatchery trout should only be put in lakes where it's easy access for both cohorts to fish for them.

Crass, insensitive, self centered.

 

[lycoflyfisher]

Is anyone aware of specific water quality parameters that or thresholds that indicate a certain stream section has the ability to support a Class A population? I'm aware of general trends for increased wild trout population but the beauty of nature is when your thrown a curveball. I know during my unassessed water days we found significant wild trout populations where you would least expect, in some cases in very urban settings. Also, to establish long term water quality monitoring stations on every stream to decide whether it should be stocked or not would be very expensive.

 

[shakey]

BrookieChaser wrote:
Stocked trout are for children and old people. Hatchery trout should only be put in lakes where it's easy access for both cohorts to fish for them.

that's pretty funny,considering brookies are often easier to catch than stockies,or sunnies,or,anything really.

sometimes stockies are harder to catch than wild browns,or,atlantic salmon.

 

[shakey]

JerryC wrote:
Most of the streams, except Valley Creek, are stocked. I have know problem with the state stocking streams where the trout can't reproduce. I did learn that the state isn't the only ones stocking the Wissahickon. I was out for a morning walk with my church group on Earth Day and on the way back at Wise's Mill Road there a group of students and their teacher sitting on the bank. He was asking them questions about what they saw on/in the creek. In front of him there was a large blue barrel which was their biology project. They had raised brown trout from eggs and were releasing the three dozen fingerling trout that had survived into the creek. It's a project the teacher has been running for several years. You have to wonder about the trout's survival chances. As I thought about it, a
mystery was solved. A couple of years ago when I was fishing the creek later in the year I'd caught a couple of brown trout about 4 inches long, still had parr stripes on them. Were stocked browns reproducing in the Wissahickon? Apparently not but it looks like a least some the fingerlings had survived.

i would not be certain that there is no reproduction. there's some cold springs,year round.