Does stocking trout later in the year at bigger sizes lead to better fishing?
It’s an experiment that will, it seems, be conducted with no clear way to tell how it worked.
But the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is moving forward with it anyway.
The agency typically stocks fingerling trout that measure 2 to 4 inches in portions of the Yough and Allegheny rivers each spring. That will continue.
Plans are to put 39,700 rainbow trout fingerlings and 32,700 brown trout fingerlings in the Yough this coming spring, and another 44,600 rainbows and 16,100 browns in next spring. They’ll go into what’s known as the “trophy trout” section of the river, a 9.16-mile stretch from the confluence with Ramcat Run downstream to the Route 381 bridge.
The Allegheny, meanwhile, will get 50,000 rainbow trout and 50,000 brown trout fingerlings this spring and 33,300 rainbows and 50,000 browns next spring in the tailwaters area of the river, an 8.7-mile stretch from KinzuaDam downstream to Conewango Creek.
Here’s where the change comes in.
The rivers will also get bigger fingerlings – measuring 6 to 8 inches – this fall and next.
In the Yough’s case, that’s 7,000 rainbow trout this fall and 7,000 more next fall. The Allegheny will get 10,000 rainbow trout each fall.
The goal, according to Leroy Young, head of the commission’s bureau of fisheries, is to see if stocking fingerlings later in the year, at larger sizes, leads to better survival and ultimately more fish caught.
Anglers think it does, he said.
“So we want to take a look at that and see is it’s actually the case,” Young said.
How well it can tell is a question, though.
Plans are for the fall-stocked fingerlings to have a fin clipped before they go into the water. That’s to make them identifiable compared to other trout, Young said.
The next step – or at least, the best next step – would then be to do creel surveys along the water, sending agency staff out to physically examine the fish being caught by anglers, said Rick Lorson, the commission’s area 8 fisheries manager, based in Somerset.
The commission doesn’t have the money to do such work, though, Young admitted, and probably won’t.
Doing a survey of what’s swimming in the Yough, at least, is also unlikely, given manpower considerations, the fact the river is too deep to survey while wading and too inaccessible for a survey boat, Lorson added.
The result?
The commission will attempt to have anglers record their catches via voluntary log books and perhaps even spend some time fishing the rivers themselves, Lorson said. He added, though, that whether that will turn up much useful data is hard to predict.
