Wild or stocked fish?

[pcray1231]

I care about brookies both because I like fishing for them, and because they are the native species. If I could, yes, I'd make all trout streams in PA brook trout streams. And to be clear, I think MOST of our brown trout streams would be inhabited by brookies if there were no browns.

That said, I'm also a realist and a pragmatist. I think on a stream with characteristics which give a strong advantage to browns, its a fools errand to mess with. I think switching it to a brook trout stream is an impossible task. I think it would ruin an excellent recreational fishery for no permanent advantage. You could work on shocking out browns or whatever nonstop, and maybe even get a few brookies take hold, but make a good fishery poor in the process, never really succeed in making it a good brook trout fishery, turn a lot of people against your cause, and the moment you turn your back it will switch back to browns anyway, so what have you accomplished if it has no staying power? Nothing, just make enemies of people who should be friends trying to mess with stuff.

I'm all for promoting, conserving, etc. brook trout streams. Putting more of a focus and priority on them. Conserving or helping create those conditions which favor brook trout more than brown trout. But I'm not for removal of browns, no, except maybe a very rare exception that would involve an already brookie dominated waterway with maybe just a few browns, and a permanent barrier to re-entry by browns. Maybe then you give it that little push to make it allopatric. But we're not talking Penns Creek here.

 

[silverfox]

I care about brookies both because I like fishing for them, and because they are the native species. If I could, yes, I'd make all trout streams in PA brook trout streams. And to be clear, I think MOST of our brown trout streams would be inhabited by brookies if there were no browns.

That said, I'm also a realist and a pragmatist. I think on a stream with characteristics which give a strong advantage to browns, its a fools errand to mess with. I think switching it to a brook trout stream is an impossible task. I think it would ruin an excellent recreational fishery for no permanent advantage. You could work on shocking out browns or whatever nonstop, and maybe even get a few brookies take hold, but make a good fishery poor in the process, never really succeed in making it a good brook trout fishery, turn a lot of people against your cause, and the moment you turn your back it will switch back to browns anyway, so what have you accomplished if it has no staying power? Nothing, just make enemies of people who should be friends trying to mess with stuff.

I'm all for promoting, conserving, etc. brook trout streams. Putting more of a focus and priority on them. But not for trying to turn well established brown trout streams into brook trout streams.

Just to be clear, the Upper Savage is in the top 10 fly fishing destinations list, is generally regarded as the best brook trout fishery south of New England, and is even in some top lists for brook trout streams in the east. It's 100% possible. All you need is a DNR willing to write a few lines of legal jargon in the state code.

 

[jifigz]

I have never fished the Savage. Maybe I should book a place nearby and make a multi-day trip out of it. It seems like it would be worth the experience. I know Ryan Sheehan is a big fan so it has at least him on this website in its corner.

 

[Fish Sticks]

I have never fished the Savage. Maybe I should book a place nearby and make a multi-day trip out of it. It seems like it would be worth the experience. I know Ryan Sheehan is a big fan so it has at least him on this website in its corner.

He might be talking he is a big fan of the tail water section. The brook trout management area is a different section. Although its possible and likely he does both i am not sure. I would guess he knows both

 

[Mikey2006]

You missed the point again. We care about protecting brook trout because losing species diversity is what matters. If angling and what anglers generally want is the reason for protecting something then small 5-7 inch natives would be low on the list to protect because most anglers don't care about them. We are select bunch that care. To only protect things that provide a recreational angle for humans is, once again, so short-sighted. Plus, as humans who have altered so much we should at least try to save some things that our actions have ruined.

Case in point, DDT and the resurrection of bald eagles and California Condors. Why did we save those and ban DDT? Why did we save the bison? Sure, you can hunt them, but not really anymore, not like you used to. How about Polar Bears and Grizzlies? Why did we save these critters?

I wasn’t saying that we should only conserve species for fishing purposes, I was just saying that I’m not in favor of removing brown trout where brook trout are not/were not once living in the stream. If we could prove brook trout once existed In certain creeks I would be in favor of removing brown trout from those creeks, even creeks like falling springs and letort

 

[Fish Sticks]

Even as a native fish advocate there are some streams that with limited time, resources, and manpower we just have to say “we are not fighting the battle there”. So i agree with what everyone is trying to say about you have to select places where your efforts are going to be high impact. But further, beyond just brook trout, large restoration efforts are looking at watershed scale “multi-native species restorations” where you have high conservation value fish, amphibians, and crustaceans. Essentially your just protecting ecosystem biodiversity thats intact which is what J-figs was mentioning.

If you picture a jenga tower and each level of three blocks is a trophic level in a food web in this analogy, more blocks(native species) at each level equals less likely the whole tower(or food web) crashes down.

Something i think about alot is that we have not even scratched the surface how these native co-evolved species interact with each other.

Atlantic salmon evolving to rely on sea lamprey reddds

Hellbenders evolving to have chemical signals that tell them a native fish predator is approaching them during their vulnerable larval/juvenile stage. Its been demonstrated they cannot chemically detect, and hide from, brown and rainbow trout and this is likely harming their pooulations. (60 thousand stocked in kettle)

Communal redds between different native minnow and stoneroller species ect.

There are so many coevolved processes that we have no idea about but that are likely crucial that if you find a chunk of that biodiversity thats the hill to die on. Now thats not to say that for an individual species has a very unique life history you should not protect it if you can due to low biodiversity, it just might not be where you go full on large geographical scale stronghold from what I can gather.

 

[pcray1231]

I’m not in favor of removing brown trout where brook trout are not/were not once living in the stream

I'm on your side here. But name one, lol.

Pretty much every single wild brown/rainbow trout stream in this state, and the vast majority of our stocked waters, including the bigger and now too warm for trout ones, held wild brook trout before the logging boom and introduction of brown trout. Anything smaller than the 4 or 5 major rivers.

Yes including falling springs, letort, spring, penns, little juniata, pine, tionesta, clarion, the list goes on. And its WELL documented and written about. They were famous, written about, destination fisheries before the switch to browns.

I woulda been all for keeping them brookies. But I think attempts to turn them back to brookies today would ultimately fail, and ruin good fisheries in the process, and turn half the anglers against the conservation movement along the way.

There may be exceptions where its still possible. Kettle above Ole Bull has been mentioned numerous times as a place it could work.

 

[Mikey2006]

I'm on your side here. But name one, lol.

Pretty much every single wild brown/rainbow trout stream in this state, and the vast majority of our stocked waters, including the bigger and now too warm for trout ones, held wild brook trout before the logging boom and introduction of brown trout. Anything smaller than the 4 or 5 major rivers.

I’m sure there’s lots of brown trout streams that used to hold Brookies but now cannot just because of other factors outside of invasive brown/rainbows. But yeah I’d be in favor of a mass removal of invasive trout in waters brookies could live. Even if you can get them out completely, make brookies catch and realease and treat browns like they treat snakeheads: kill whenever you catch one. If enough people actually did that it would definitely help. I know nothing on this topic other than what I’ve been reading on this website over the past month but that just makes sense to me

 

[pcray1231]

Lets say, Spring Creek for instance. It was a primarily brookie stream 80 years ago. A very good one. Read some of George Harvey's accounts. Big fish too.

If browns dissapeared tomorrow, would brookies overtake it? Oh absolutely, no question about it. Same goes for Letort, Falling Spring, Penns, LJR.

What would happen if we tried? Maybe start the process with rotetone. Then shock it yearly and remove any browns.
Encourage harvest of browns and C&R on brookies. You'd knock that brown population waaaayyy down. And there just wouldnt be many fish for a while. An immensely popular stream destroyed. Millions of dollars yearly gone. People up in arms. Fly fishing groups instant enemies to the cause. After a few years, brookies gain a foothold and are locked in a neverending battle with the remaining browns for supremecy, its fishable again but a far cry from what it is right now. A nonstop effort to keep the brookies in the fight.

And the minute you turn your back, and dont shock one year because of whatever, the browns overtake it. All that for nothing. If the only way to keep it brookies is nonstop human maintenance, and the brookies wouldnt be there without it, I dont see that as conservation, or restoration of anything really.

The water determines whether browns or brookies are dominant. Brookies could live in most brown trout streams, and browns could live in most brook trout streams should the other species not be there.

If its more suited to browns, the only way I'd even consider it is if there's a barrier and reasonable hope of getting them all. And thats just not a very common scenario.

I think a better approach is to focus on all those primarily brookie streams which have a few browns. Brookies are winning in these places, but threatened. Work on the water to favor brookies.

 

[Mikey2006]

Lets say, Spring Creek for instance. It was a primarily brookie stream 80 years ago. A very good one. Read some of George Harvey's accounts. Big fish too.

If browns dissapeared tomorrow, would brookies overtake it? Oh absolutely, no question about it. Same goes for Letort, Falling Spring, Penns, LJR.

What would happen if we tried? Maybe start the process with rotetone. Then shock it yearly and remove any browns.
Encourage harvest of browns and C&R on brookies. You'd knock that brown population waaaayyy down. And there just wouldnt be many fish for a while. An immensely popular stream destroyed. Millions of dollars yearly gone. People up in arms. Fly fishing groups instant enemies to the cause. After a few years, brookies gain a foothold and are locked in a neverending battle with the remaining browns for supremecy, its fishable again but a far cry from what it is right now. A nonstop effort to keep the brookies in the fight.

And the minute you turn your back, and dont shock one year because of whatever, the browns overtake it. All that for nothing. If the only way to keep it brookies is nonstop human maintenance, and the brookies wouldnt be there without it, I dont see that as conservation, or restoration of anything really.

The water determines whether browns or brookies are dominant. Brookies could live in most brown trout streams, and browns could live in most brook trout streams should the other species not be there.

If its more suited to browns, the only way I'd even consider it is if there's a barrier and reasonable hope of getting them all. And thats just not a very common scenario.

I think a better approach is to focus on all those primarily brookie streams which have a few browns. Brookies are winning in these places, but threatened. Work on the water to favor brookies.

Yeah I understand what your saying. On a smaller scale, let’s say mountain creek upstream of pine grove furnace and it’s tributaries. You could pick any small network of streams but I’m just using this one as an example. From what I’ve seen while fishing there and also seen online it’s mostly brown trout unless you go far up in the tributaries. Given the smaller scale, if people kept all the browns they caught and efforts were made to shock and remove browns, would it work better in those smaller streams with smaller populations? Even if you couldn’t remove them completely I just think that if you flip the ratio of brown trout to brook trout enough the brook trout wouldn’t have any problems

 

[Fish Sticks]

I do not think spring creek is the place to restore brook trout obviously, there is much lower fruit. But if we are looking at spring creek and pcray said its likely competition there water temp or other factors that make it a deal breaker for brook trout. Now i don’t want anyone to confuse that with there would be 24” 4lb brookies in spring creek if there were no browns like there prob was before clear cutting, development and Ag. But my guess is that browns are the deal breaker for presence of brook trout just based on springs temps and abundance of groundwater rich habitat and what we know about competition.

So the second half of the spring creek scenario “if one male and female brown get left behind its game over if its not shocked every year” may not be the case necessarily and heres why…..

1. Stocking suppresses wild trout populations yes. However if you are mounting an invasion against brook trout stocking stupid numbers of browns which was probably done in spring creek is just as unnatural a human charity to a single species as electroshocking out a competitor. We have to remember its not all invasive brown trout’s dominance that led to displacement.

There was a massive human intervention of introducing competitor after competitor of hatchery invasive brown trout while no one replaced the wild native brook trout. This is the same reason we are against stocking invasive browns today even if wild browns exist we cannot rotenone. The human charity of insane unnatural numbers that got browns there is often forgotten and would not be present to help the browns this time during a thinning the herd shocking campaign with mandatory harvest on invasive browns.

2. Brook trout can compete with browns and its probably a numbers game based on this research and observations in the savage river and other places. Lower density of brown trout likely = higher biotic resistance of brook trout to invasion.

This paper backs that up

https://usgs-cru-individual-data.s3.amazonaws.com/caseypennock/intellcont/Pennocketal2022_Article_HighDensitiesOfConspecificsBuf-1.pdf

And further what mikey is saying about thinning the herd reducing competition to sustainable levels where brookies can take it from there is actually what some fisheries scientists ate talking about too. See this article

“Less traditional options for management of Brown Trout are promising and wor- thy of further study (Budy and Gaeta 2017). First, biotic resistance (Elton 1958), expressed as high density of native Cutthroat Trout, is the mechanism limiting ex- pansion and establishment of Brown Trout into upper headwaters of western U.S. streams. Although Brown Trout are unaffected by high density of native Cutthroat Trout, Cutthroat Trout performance increases with increasing density of conspecific species. Therefore, if Cutthroat Trout density is high enough, Brown Trout may not be able to expand, which is promising for native fish management, The potential for biotic resistance suggests that shifting the balance of predominance back to native fish may be sufficient, rather than trying to eradicate Brown Trout. Second, nonna- tive Brown Trout have difficulty passing American beaver Castor canadensis dams that do not impede native Cutthroat Trout (Lokteff et al. 2013). This presents a poten- tially promising management option for passive stream restoration across the western United States (e.g., Pollock et al. 2015), as beaver dam densities increase in the future. Third, natural large-scale wildfire can be used to reset native trout stream ecosystems (Chapter 18). After a fire that may kill many of the Brown Trout present, any surviving Brown Trout can be removed and streams restocked with native trout.”

https://www.montana.edu/mcmahon/Paradox%20book%20chapter.pdf

So in summation heres what will never happen again thats missing from the spring creek scenario.

1. Clear cutting at the same time as..
2. Mass Ag from Mass pristine forest all at once at the same time as…
3. Crazy point source discharge from tanneries and mines at the same time as…
4. Mass human charity to invasive species by continually stocking them(in the water your removing them in) at the same time as….
5. People catching and keeping 365lbs of brook trout on a casual weekend fishing trip(historical over fishing)

DOESN’T SOUND SO HOPELESS ANYMORE lol

gives a lot of hope that brook trout can handle business if they get the same unnatural human charity brown trout did in the beginning then leave it to them

 

[pcray1231]

if people kept all the browns they caught and efforts were made to shock and remove browns, would it work better in those smaller streams with smaller populations? Even if you couldn’t remove them completely I just think that if you flip the ratio of brown trout to brook trout enough the brook trout wouldn’t have any problems

Until you stop removing browns, yeah. Without some change to the actual water, if you take your finger off of it it returns to status quo within a few years. What's the point of conservation, taking it back to what it would have been without human influence, if it'd return to status quo without human influence?

I don't really have a problem with doing that on a small handful of streams, as a PR thing, promote the crap out of it as brook trout destination, teach the public of the importance of brook trout, start changing some minds. But there are a thousand "Mountain Creeks" in this state and I dont think constant maintenance like that is feasible on so many, as a general policy.

But maybe some stream work to encourage brookies to dominate more of it, absolutely, sign me up. And lets say mountain creek had a big ole dam or impassable waterfall at the mouth, and a manageable list of tribs you could attack. So if you got em all, browns could not re-invade. It might take a while to get em all, and ultimately it could fail. But I'd be interested in exploring that.

And thats especially true in streams where brook trout are already competing decently well. Like the Savage River. These are streams that hang on that edge over which species the water "wants" to have. If it was empty, and you put 1 male and female brown, and 1 male and female brookie in there, flip a coin on which species would establish as dominant. And once one gets established, that species becomes dominant, but an "event" could reset it and give you another coin flip. Maybe you give it that coin flip sometimes. I think upper Kettle fits in that category. I think its an ideal place for the brook trout destination idea and could even become "maintenance free" in time.

To be clear, on Spring, yes I think without browns it would be full of sizable brookies. Maybe not 24", but comparable to brown trout sizes today, yeah, some in mid teens. And just as many. That said, I also think it strongly favors browns. Its an example where if you could make it allopatric for a bit, throwing just a couple wild browns in, they'd gain a foothold quickly and take it back over completely in a decade or 2.

 

[Fish Sticks]

Until you stop removing browns, yeah. Without some change to the actual water, if you take your finger off of it it returns to status quo within a few years. What's the point of conservation, taking it back to what it would have been without human influence, if it'd return to status quo without human influence?

I don't really have a problem with doing that on a small handful of streams, as a PR thing, promote the crap out of it as brook trout destination, teach the public of the importance of brook trout, start changing some minds. But there are a thousand "Mountain Creeks" in this state and I dont think constant maintenance like that is feasible on so many, as a general policy.

But maybe some stream work to encourage brookies to dominate more of it, absolutely, sign me up. And lets say mountain creek had a big ole dam at the mouth, and a manageable list of tribs you could attack. So if you got em all, browns could not re-invade. It might take a while to get em all, and ultimately it could fail. But I'd be interested in exploring that.

And thats especially true in streams where brook trout are already competing decently well. Like the Savage River. These are streams that hang on that edge. If it was empty, and you put 1 male and female brown, and 1 male and female brookie in there, flip a coin on which species would establish as dominant. And once one gets established, that species becomes dominant, but an "event" could reset it and give you another coin flip. Maybe you give it that. I think upper Kettle fits in that category. I think its an ideal place for the brook trout destination idea and could even become "maintenance free" in time.

To be clear, on Spring, yes I think without browns it would be full of sizable brookies. Maybe not 24", but comparable to brown trout sizes today, yeah. And just as many. That said, I also think it strongly favors browns. Its an example where if you could make it allopatric for a bit, throwing just a couple wild browns in would gain a foothold quickly and take it back over completely in a decade or 2.

in kettle i think a “re-balancing” mentioned in the linked article with harvest has a decent chance of being maintenance free based on the research in my last post.

 

[pcray1231]

Above Ole Bull. Me too.

 

[Mikey2006]

Until you stop removing browns, yeah. Without some change to the actual water, if you take your finger off of it it returns to status quo within a few years. What's the point of conservation, taking it back to what it would have been without human influence, if it'd return to status quo without human influence?

I don't really have a problem with doing that on a small handful of streams, as a PR thing, promote the crap out of it as brook trout destination, teach the public of the importance of brook trout, start changing some minds. But there are a thousand "Mountain Creeks" in this state and I dont think constant maintenance like that is feasible on so many, as a general policy.

But maybe some stream work to encourage brookies to dominate more of it, absolutely, sign me up. And lets say mountain creek had a big ole dam or impassable waterfall at the mouth, and a manageable list of tribs you could attack. So if you got em all, browns could not re-invade. It might take a while to get em all, and ultimately it could fail. But I'd be interested in exploring that.

And thats especially true in streams where brook trout are already competing decently well. Like the Savage River. These are streams that hang on that edge over which species the water "wants" to have. If it was empty, and you put 1 male and female brown, and 1 male and female brookie in there, flip a coin on which species would establish as dominant. And once one gets established, that species becomes dominant, but an "event" could reset it and give you another coin flip. Maybe you give it that coin flip sometimes. I think upper Kettle fits in that category. I think its an ideal place for the brook trout destination idea and could even become "maintenance free" in time.

To be clear, on Spring, yes I think without browns it would be full of sizable brookies. Maybe not 24", but comparable to brown trout sizes today, yeah, some in mid teens. And just as many. That said, I also think it strongly favors browns. Its an example where if you could make it allopatric for a bit, throwing just a couple wild browns in, they'd gain a foothold quickly and take it back over completely in a decade or 2.

Last I checked the creek im talking about is also listed as a stocked trout year round creek in the lower section of the wild trout part and guess what they stock: brown trout. There’s just a whole lot of management issues in this state

 

[Fish Sticks]

Last I checked the creek im talking about is also listed as a stocked trout year round creek in the lower section of the wild trout part and guess what they stock: brown trout. There’s just a whole lot of management issues in this state

Last I checked the creek im talking about is also listed as a stocked trout year round creek in the lower section of the wild trout part and guess what they stock: brown trout. There’s just a whole lot of management issues in this state

Yea for sure. i try to highlight to people that if you cross the pa md border they stock zero browns over brook trout that i am aware of and its not some impossible inevitability that what we do has to continue. We are talking about pen, ink, and saving money.

 

[ryansheehan]

That there is a brown trout which happens to be invasive native.

Fixed that for you.🤣

 

[ryansheehan]

I have never fished the Savage. Maybe I should book a place nearby and make a multi-day trip out of it. It seems like it would be worth the experience. I know Ryan Sheehan is a big fan so it has at least him on this website in its corner.

You would love it, it's a fantastic area. There's lots of areas to explore as Fish sticks mentioned. The tailwater section of the Savage has browns, brookies and rainbows. It's probably 80+percent browns depending on the section. The upper savage is a great brook trout fishery but unfortunately it also deals with stocking in some sections. The real gem in my opinion is some of the smaller feeder streams to the resevoir.

 

[Joe_P]

He might be talking he is a big fan of the tail water section. The brook trout management area is a different section. Although its possible and likely he does both i am not sure. I would guess he knows both

I never understood whey they stock rainbows in the upper savage. It seems completely unecessary. That watershed is a nice place to catch nice sized brookies. Lots of 10 inchers below the dam, apparently some big ones above as well but i have never caught them. Going to school at WVU, the savage is probably my favorite area on the east coast.

 

[troutbert]

The upper savage is a great brook trout fishery but unfortunately it also deals with stocking in some sections.

Oh, like PA.