Why not bass?

I still don't get why trout, rather than bass, are stocked in marginal waters where they will die in the first heat wave. Like Tim said, there is a huge trout infrastructure, and it would be difficult to adapt it to bass. I just don't get why the state started stocking trout in these marginal streams in the first place. Is it just a cultural thing, i.e. when the hatcheries were being developed, people weren't interested in bass?
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To understand these things, forget about fisheries, and think about the self-interests of the parties. Then it all becomes very simple to understand.

The hatchery system creates jobs, budgets, need for managers, offices for people within the PFBC. For local politicos a hatchery in their district creates jobs and brings in the fish to their district, so votes for the politico.

This is the truth of the hatchery system. Common sense and scientific fisheries has nothing to do with it.
 
Ian,
I believe the state started stocking trout because the public wanted trout where they were wiped out during the logging days. don't forget, unlike other game fish, brook trout inhabited nearly every watershed in PA before then, so trout were a priority. That is why even now there are wild brook trout all over the Commonwealth.
 
I think that we need conservation groups like tu now for smallmouth, if there was one in my area I would I join it in a heart beat . If we clean up the water and do some stream improvements on our smallmouth streams we would'nt need to stock and the fish would thrive .And if we would stop stocking trout on smallmouth water there would be alot more smallies in our streams. If you want to stock unnatural trout some place for people to catch and eat than you should stock them in a unnatural body of water like a man made pond or lake so they won't compete with the wild fish for food in the stream.I think that if the susky had trout in it that alot more people would get involved with all these fish kills. I do think that If they don't figure out the problem on the susky with the fish kills then they will need to start stocking it ,to keep populations up but they should only stock fry since they seem to be having the biggest kill rate .
 
Good point. I would certainly join BU, and try to improve the fishing on the Wissahickon. It holds wild SB now, even with heavy stocking and presumably poor water quality. I'd love to see if the population could bbe dimproved.
 
Other than the recent fish kills the Susqy was loaded from bank to bank with smallies that descended from fish that were stocked in the late 1800's. To think that any hatchery would be able to produce fish at this rate is almost as insane as the notion that trout are "muscling out" the smallmouth. It is an invasive species. Period. At least some of the trout are a native species. Not to be rude or harsh (although I think I just was-sorry), but I can't believe anyone thinks that more stocking in Pa. is a good idea. Smallmouth bass will live anywhere that has conditions favorable to them and breed at an insane rate. If they cannot reproduce succesfully then what sense would stocking them make? Inability to reproduce means the stream can no longer support the numbers of fish that are present, and we already waste enough money putting fish in places like that. Once again, sorry if I came off as rude, it was not my intention, but it just seems silly to me.

Boyer
 
MattBoyer,

I couldn't agree more. If smallies cant breed in the Susqy then how would stocking ever help besides temporarily? Its clearly a water quality issue because the area smallmouth streams are still as good as ever.
 
There hasn't been any problems with breeding its been that the fry have not been able to survive thier first year. And there is no native trout in pa the Brookie is acually a Char and is considered by Pa F&BC as only a cold water (SUNFISH). If you think Smallies are invasive than so are every wild Brown and Rainbow trout. Close to 50% of the fish in this state are invasive species anyway . Stocking trout on a wild smallie stream is no different than stocking them on a wild trout stream. They stock the trout in the streams at the same time when the smallies are feeding regulary to get ready to spawn and since the trout are in the stream they have to compete more for food which ads stress to an already stressed fish . I don't think that stocking smallies is a good thing unless it is used to bring up the fish populations that were lost in fish kills but they shouldn't stock the fish until they find out the problem that caused the fish kill

If they cannot reproduce succesfully then what sense would stocking them make?
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That is exactly why we shouldn't stock trout on a warm water fishery that has a wild population of any kind of gamefish :pint: :hammer: :pint: :pint: :pint: :hammer: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint:
 
That is exactly why we shouldn't stock trout on a warm water fishery that has a wild population of any kind of gamefish :pint: :hammer: :pint: :pint: :pint: :hammer: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint:
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Well then, I guess it's settled, we agree, not stocking in either situation is the right thing to do! :-D

Boyer
 
Fredrick,

You have hit the nail on the head! GREAT POST! Here's a question for all you Susqy fishers, What is the native fish of the Susqy?
JH
 
flyfishermanj wrote:
Fredrick,

You have hit the nail on the head! GREAT POST! Here's a question for all you Susqy fishers, What is the native fish of the Susqy?
JH
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I'm not sure. I did some looking into it once, and the only thing I found was an article about the archeological excavations of Native American camps on what is now City Island. The scientists execavated the trash dumps and found skeletons of what were described as "rough fish". So I've never put much stock in the idea that the Susquehanna ever had trout in any numbers. The river has been channelized, damed etc. but the intention of all that was actually to make it deeper. So if anything way back when it was even wider and more winding. So it probably had an even bigger flood plain and was shallower. Which would would make it a very warm river, at least down this way.

My bet is that the major fishery for the Native Americans would have been shad.
 
my guess would be brook trout. it is known that brook trout used the susqy to migrate all over the state. i could only imagine what kind of brook trout fishery the susqy was. other than that, shad?
shad still make runs up that thing.
 
Atlantic Salmon? Remember hearing that there used to be runs in the Susky. Would they be considered native though?

With regards to the original post, I have wondered the same, but I think Matt nailed it. If the watersheds can't support them now, stocking won't help. Damn, if they can't support smallies, what does that say about the water quality? I think we need to get rid of more or these old dams on these creeks. I like what I see where the damn was removed on the Perkiomen, could the others up stream be removed? Are they needed for flood control? The change in water level in that creek due to rain/thunderstorms is insane!
 
Damn, if they can't support smallies, what does that say about the water quality? I think we need to get rid of more or these old dams on these creeks.
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I think we need to get rid of some of the outdated sewage treatment plants. Some communities and homes still flush straight to the river.
 
Does anyone have any references that support the idea that the Susquehanna held brook trout originally?

How about Atlantic salmon?

I've never seen any historical accounts that support these claims.

The Susquehanna originally had tremendous shad runs. That ended with the building of the dams on the lower Susque. The dams are for power generation, so they aren't likely to be removed.

Just what the main resident fish were is a good question, since smallmouth bass were not present.

Maybe channel cats were the main resident fish?
 
Dear troutbert,

The predominant fish on the Susquehanna were shad and herring. Like someone in an earlier post said, the hydrodams eliminated the shad run, but now all the dams on the lower river have fish ladders and shad are beginning to show up.

Atlantic salmon were never found south of Connecticut/NY. The Delaware never had a salmon run for example.

I don't think the Susquehanna was ever a trout stream. Sure they may have used it on occasion in the Fall, Winter, and Spring but it gets far too warm for trout. Mid-day water temps the past week in Harrisburg were in the mid 80's. There aren't that many cold water tributaries feeding the river either.

I've fished the Susquehanna at it's source Otsego Lake in Cooperstown NY. The Lake itself supports trout but the river doesn't. Even up there it isn't a trout stream though most of the tributaries in the region are trout streams.

Regards,
Tim Murphy :)
 
if my memory serves correct i belive that nick karas's book talks about how the brook trout migrated during the end of the ice age through all the major river systems. this included the susqy. now i dont know if they held there or not. i belive it was just used as a "highway" for the fish. i would think that with the woods still intact and the water quality being better before we ruined everything, that it had brook trout in the river. but i could be wrong.
 
Take out the dams and let the striper and shad return...they were native to the river !!! Just like the Delaware... :-D
 
Is there a fish latter on the conowingo because when I drove over it I didn't see one. I was fishing for shad this spring on Deer Creek in Maryland and I caught plenty of them .So there still plenty running up to the dam. :lol:
 
The brook trout may have moved up the Susquehanna when they were re-colonizing areas that had been covered by glaciers, but the water would have been much colder then. This was a LONG time ago. That's probably what Karas was referring to.

I have never read any historical accounts that support the idea that the Susquehanna supported brook trout at the time of early European settlement. I think that is just speculation.
 
Heres a nice article on the shad run restoration

http://www.nativefish.org/articles/Migratory_Fish_Restoration.php
 
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