Anglers who pursue wild trout say they don’t keep fish very often, but have no problem with allowing some harvest.
Photo: Pixabay
Go to a football game and you’d expect the people in the stands to be, you know, football fans.
So, too, it is with a wild trout summit.
Schedule an 8-hour gathering, on a Saturday, to discuss the past, present and future of wild trout and you’d expect all those who take time to attend to be wild trout anglers.
That’s not the case.
Andy Shiels, chief of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s bureau of fisheries, said each of the 240 attendees at the agency’s first-ever wild trout summit was given a 10-question survey to fill out. A total of 109 did.
Many were diehards, to be sure. Fifty-four percent said they fish for wild trout more than 20 days a year.
But, surprisingly, another 14 percent said they fish only for stocked trout.
Trophy trout
Something else took the commission by surprise.
By regulation, the commission describes a “trophy” trout as one of at least 14 inches. That’s the benchmark used on waters managed under all tackle trophy trout and trophy trout artificial lures only regulations.
Anglers at the summit were asked to identify what they considered a trophy trout. They were given five options: 14, 16, 18 and 20 inches and other.
Thirty-three percent said a trophy trout was 18 inches long; another 33 percent said 20.
Only 4 percent put a 14-incher in that category.
Shiels said that was of “extreme interest.”
“And as an agency and biologists, we believe 14 inches really isn’t a trophy trout these days compared to when we invented that regulation,” Shiels said.
Going forward, he said, the commission could consider adjusting its regulations to better meet public expectations.
Harvest
Also interesting, he said, was what wild trout anglers expect when fishing waters managed with special regulations. The questionnaire asked if they anticipated finding more fish overall, regardless of size, or larger than usual numbers of big fish.
Sixty-one percent said they expected more fish, compared to 28 percent who expected bigger fish.
“People are interested in catching fish, catching lots of fish. They want to be in a place where they have the opportunity to catch lots of fish,” Shiels concluded.
Another questions asked anglers their opinions about a slot harvest limit. On a portion of Penns Creek right now, for example, anglers can keep fish between 7 and 12 inches.
All those longer and shorter have to be released.
The idea is to allow for some harvest while hopefully moving more fish into larger size classes, said commission biologist Jason Detar.
Most of the attendees who filled out the questionnaire said they rarely harvest wild trout. Seventy-five percent said they never do. Nineteen percent said they rarely do and 5 percent said they sometimes do.
Yet the survey found that 72 percent support a slot limit regulation, whereas just 14 percent oppose it. Shiels said that’s “really exciting” to the commission.
Wild trout anglers, who might be supposed to be strict catch-and-release fishermen, seem alright with some harvest, he said.
“Three quarters of the people would support that type of regulation. I think that’s a move forward for us,” Shiels said.
Next steps
As for where to go next, commissioner Len Lichvar of Somerset County said the summit did a lot to eliminate confusion about wild trout management.
“I think that was the real plus in that summit,” he said.
He wants to keep the momentum rolling, though, through creation of a “wild trout work group” comprised of commissioners, agency staff and four to five members of the angling public. Lichvar said he’d like it to take some of the issues raised at the summit, boil them down and make recommendations on how to how to perhaps improve wild trout and wild trout fishing.
“Basically it would continue the discussion and narrow down all these ideas,” Lichvar said.
Commissioner Ed Mascharka, chairman of the commission’s fisheries committee, said he would look into developing such a group.
Meanwhile, commission executive director John Arway said there’s a plan for going forward. Trout Unlimited has pledged continued support.
“So we’ve got a TU army out there’s that’s assembled and ready to go,” Arway said.
He’s committed to aiding it by having commissioner staffers attend a meeting of every Trout Unlimited chapter in the state in the next year or two to talk about the wild trout summit.
