Post by yihunt on Apr 12, 2009 12:08:06 GMT -4
Buzz up!By Bob Frye, TRIBUNE-REVIEW OUTDOORS EDITOR
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Ron Bachy can't tell you what he'll be doing from year to year on the third Saturday in February, the second Tuesday in June or the fourth Monday in September.
But the first Saturday after April 11?
That's opening day of Pennsylvania's trout season — it falls on April 18 this year — and Bachy will be fishing, just as he has been every year for more than three decades.
Most recently, that's meant being on Blacklegs Creek in Indiana County with his dad, brother and son. Before that, it was Kettle Creek, Loyalhanna Creek or Keystone Lake.
"I'm 40, and we've been fishing opening day since I was 7 or 8 years old," said Bachy, of Turtle Creek and Pitcairn-Monroeville Sportsmen's Club.
"I think the only one we missed was when my brother got married."
Hundreds of thousands of anglers state-wide can share similar tales. Despite the fact there are opportunities to fish year-round, opening day for trout — the most popular, most ardently sought fish in Pennsylvania, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service data — is widely recognized as "the" first day of fishing.
"People circle the date on the calendar," said Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commissioner Tom Shetterly of Charleroi. "It's an event.
"It's understood that that's the first day of fishing."
Most of that activity — on opening day and throughout spring — takes place over stocked trout.
A survey done last year by Responsive Management, a Virginia-based research firm, found that 63 percent of Pennsylvania trout anglers fished stocked waters more than 75 percent of the time, and 93 percent fished stocked waters at least half of the time.
Families in particular rely on those fish: 66 percent of adults who take a child fishing fish mostly for stocked trout, and 99 percent fish for stocked trout at least half the time.
"So that kind of gives you some perspective," said Leroy Young, director of the commission's bureau of fisheries. "A significant number of our trout anglers are spending a significant portion of their time on stocked waters."
THE PROBLEMS
Increasingly, though, the commission's trout stocking program is facing challenges.
• The number of trout available has, in recent years, plummeted.
The Fish and Boat Commission was stocking 5.2 million adult fish as recently as 2001, and 4.2 million in 2006. This year it will stock 3.2 million.
That's partly the result of a decision to stock fewer but larger fish. Bit it's mainly the fallout from environmental regulations limiting the fish waste that can escape from hatcheries. That's slashed the pounds of trout the commission can produce.
Things aren't likely to change.
The commission could raise a few more fish if it went back to smaller ones — something anglers have said they don't want — but its hatcheries are "pretty much at capacity," said Tom Greene, director of its cold-water fisheries unit.
"I don't think we'll ever see the days of five million trout again," Greene said.
The reasons are simple:
• Those hatcheries are old — some date to the early 1900s — and in need of repair. The commission is using almost $24 million in Growing Greener II money to make improvements. But with the overall, system-wide price tag for upgrades estimated at upward of $80 million, much remains to be done.
And in at least one case, renovating a hatchery will mean losing trout in the short term.
• An attempt to supplement the trout program by buying fish failed. The commission signed a three-year deal with a North Carolina hatchery in 2005 to buy 100,000 trout annually at a cost of $159,000.
When the commission looked to renew that deal last fall, though, the same hatchery was the only bidder — and the price had skyrocketed to $439,400 a year, an increase of almost 270 percent. Commission officials determined that was too much and killed the program.
• The commission's own trout don't always stay where they're put. Research begun three years ago has revealed that, in some streams, as many as 90 percent of stocked trout swim away before opening day. The problem has impacted streams all over the state — including Dunbar Creek in Fayette County, Little Chartiers Creek in Washington and Brush Creek in Indiana.
It's a limited number of waters that fall into that category, stressed Rick Lorson, the commission's area 8 biologist in Somerset.
The commission is addressing problem streams by stocking them closer to the opener, he said.
But with no common denominator yet discovered to predict which streams might have problems, solving the residency issue remains a work in progress.
• The cost of raising trout continues to escalate. Commission officials estimated the cost of producing 3.4 million trout in 2006-07 at $7.2 million. That was about 16 percent of the agency's entire budget.
That's likely just a fraction of the real expense, though, said Bill Worobec, a Fish and Boat Commissioner from Williamsport.
Past estimates have taken into account only such things as fish food and gasoline. But the program "has tentacles that run all through this agency," he said.
A report that includes those other costs — such as personnel — is due to be delivered to commissioners tomorrow. No one within the agency would comment on its findings, but some have speculated that the price per fish could be huge.
Worobec said it's important to determine that specifically.
"This trout program is arguably the largest product we sell," he said. "It's the most heavily advertised, the most heavily followed. We ought to be able to know what it costs to deliver that."
• While costs are going up, fishing-license sales — the commission's primary source of revenue — have been declining. The state sold more than one million licenses annually from 1977 to 1995. It sold about 835,000 last year. That was up slightly over 2005 and 2006, but otherwise the lowest total since 1971.
WHAT IT MEANS
All of those issues have convinced Ken Undercoffer that the days of stocking millions of adult trout are doomed.
Undercoffer, of Clearfield, is a former resident of Greensburg and a former president of the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited. He says the commission's trout program has taught generations of people to expect loads of fish in places that wouldn't otherwise support them.
The commission — by creating a "giant welfare program" — has been able to meet those expectations for a long while, he admitted. But he's not sure it can keep doing so.
"If the environmental impact of their hatcheries doesn't force them to quit, the economics eventually will," Undercoffer said.
"The whole idea of going out and throwing fish into streams for people to catch in two or three days, it just doesn't seem a practical way to approach this sport."
That's the very secret to the stocking program's success, though, said Rocco Ali of Apollo, a past president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs and like Undercoffer a member of the committee working to update the commission's trout management plan. It provides recreation that native fisheries could not sustain, he said.
What's more, anglers would never allow such a thing politically, he said.
"If you took away stocked trout in Pennsylvania, I think that would be suicide," Ali said.
Indeed, the 2008 trout survey revealed that 34 percent of anglers said they would be "not at all likely" to buy a fishing license if the number of adult trout stocked was significantly reduced.
THE RESPONSE
For their part, Fish and Boat Commissioners say they have no intention of cutting back or eliminating trout stocking. They are, though, taking a "hard look" at the program, with the intention of making it more efficient, Young said.
For starters, the cost analysis should allow for better management, said Worobec.
"Once we know what it really costs to put an adult-sized stocked trout into someone's creel, we can make better decisions on where
and how we want to do that," Worobec said.
The commission is also studying various types of trout feed to determine how well they perform. Is it more cost effective to buy the cheapest feed available, or are there others, more expensive initially, that pound for pound produce more fish flesh? That's what the commission wants to know, Young said.
This summer, the commission will also begin working with Penn State University to determine the best travel routes for the stocking trucks that carry trout from eight hatcheries to nearly 800 waters state-wide.
Those trucks travel about 314,000 miles each year between March 1 and May 15 — the equivalent of 12.5 trips around the Earth, said chief of trout production Brian Wisner — so being efficient is critical.
The commission also needs to address the misperception that there can't be any trout in a lake or stream if the stocking trout hasn't been there within a few days, said commissioner Len Lichvar of Stoystown.
The trout survey showed that fishing pressure falls off dramatically after May, when the spring stocking season ends. The commission has to educate anglers about the opportunities that remain, Lichvar said.
"I don't see a shortage of trout in this state," Lichvar said. "They can be caught 12 months a year. I know because I've done it.
"Our anglers just need to get out there, put their rod together, and go fish for them. I think they would be pleasantly surprised."
LICENSE SALES
Pennsylvania fishing license sales topped one million per year from 1977 to 1995, with the peak reaching 1,163,758 in 1990. They have since declined. The sale of trout stamps, which debuted in 1991, has likewise fallen. Here's a look at how sales have changed over the years.
Year: Total license sales
1967: 607,527
1977: 1,004,074
1987: 1,105,886
1997: 973,405
2007: 850,713
2008: 834,836
Year: Trout stamp sales
1991: 737,583
1995: 760,590
1999: 697,053
2003: 651,959
2007: 583,475*
2008: 570,470*
*-Includes sale or trout/Lake Erie combo stamps.
Source: Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission
WHO THEY ARE
Who are Pennsylvania's trout anglers, and where and how do they like to fish? Here's what a phone survey of trout fishermen done for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission in 2008 by Responsive Management found out.
• 91 percent of Pennsylvania trout fishermen are male.
• An overwhelming majority of stocked trout fishermen prefer streams to lakes (81 percent to 10 percent).
• Trout anglers are most active in April and May. Eighty percent fish for stocked trout in April, 78 percent in May. The next highest month is June, when 44 percent of anglers go out.
• The majority of trout anglers (53 percent) prefer to use bait. Sixteen percent prefer artificial lures and 15 percent flies.
• Thirty-four percent of anglers say they have no preference when it comes to what kind of trout they catch. Twenty-seven percent prefer to catch rainbow trout, 20 percent brooks and 19 percent browns.
Source: Pennsylvania Trout Fishing Survey
WHERE THE ANGLERS ARE
Here's a look at the top 10 counties in Pennsylvania, ranked by fishing-license sales, and the number of trout stamps and trout/Lake Erie combo stamps that they sell, and where that ranks.
1. Allegheny — 58,960 (41,000, first)
2. Erie — 31,074 (21,763, second)
3. York — 30,672 (16,854, fifth)
4. Lancaster — 24,573 (16,039, eighth)
5. Bucks — 24,473 (14,391, tenth)
6. Berks — 23,907 (16,919, fourth)
7. Montgomery — 23,708 (16,097, seventh)
8. Westmoreland — 23,651 (19,650, third)
9. Dauphin — 22,902 (16,160, sixth)
10. Luzerne — 21,903 (14,615, ninth)
Source: Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission