Raping the Spawn?
- This topic has 39 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated Dec 6, 2006 at 12:44 am by
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Stocking trucks may carry brown trout to your rivers to BOOST your population, but they don’t everywhere.
In answer to Mike’s last comment:
That is fine if that is your angling preference where you live and you can talk your G&F agency into protecting all those species. I’m speaking primarily of the tailwater system here in Arkansas because that is what I know best. Trout are the legally mitigated species now in the tailwater and what does best in the environment in the way of producing some trophy fishing potential. However,
1) Stocked trout don’t generally produce the truly large trophy fish. I’ve talked to a number of state agency biologists on this over the years. They seem to mostly agree that the wild fish are the ones you want in your rivers for trophy production and you can only produce them by and large in the river system. They don’t do well in hatcheries. Most of these wild fish are decendants from the stocking of browns via Vibert boxes back in the 70s.
2) Wild fish have a genetic advantage and plus they are conditioned to avoid coming to a commotion to feed unlike stocked trout. The one time that their “guard is let down” is
3) during the spawn. As Phil pointed out, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission closed the spawning area below Bull Shoals dam because anglers were catching these spawning trophies again and again and many of them turned up dead in spring of 1996 because of major fungus infections. If anglers can’t regulate and discipline themselves, then we need regulations to protect these fish when they are most vulnerable.I’ve never been able to understand what is so much fun or sporting about trying to catch fish that are busy about trying to reproduce and have let down their natural defenses to the point that they are ridiculously easy to catch in numbers. That’s not really my argument though. Why put in jeopardy the best fish in the river system and any natural offspring that they might otherwise produce? I would think we would want our rivers crawling with the most number of wild trophy fish a river system could sustain. I think we could manage the White at least for better trophy fishing by some angler education to not fish to these brutes when they congregate in the shoals.
When these fish move back down the river system, there are not as many of them per mile as you might think. Most of these fish head upriver during the spawn. AGFC at one time estimated the brown trout population in the catch and release area at Bull Shoals dam increases 500% during November through January. And these fish can easily move 25 miles upstream in two days given favorable water conditions.
Let’s say for the sake of argument, there are 100 browns over 20″ in the upper 8 miles of Bull Shoals tailwater normally. During the spawn that increases to 500 concentrated mostly in the upper mile. After the spawn when they move back downstream, even if you distributed all those fish evenly over 92 miles of tailwater, that’s only less than 5.5 fish per mile (browns over 20″). All I am saying is when the fish concentrate and are easy to catch, the impact on those wild fish from angling pressure can be enormous, and in fact was detrimental here in the mid 90s.
If this was Alaska, it would be a different story where you had a record 6 million sockeye coming up the Kenai summer before last and they all die after the event.
But don’t think there is no impact from catching the browns during the spawn because you can simply restock. Most of the small stocked browns probably wind up in poaching angler’s creels, heron bellys or in the truly big brown trout.
I don’t know your river Mike, but do you have wild fish stocks that have developed over the years? Those are the fish I would really want to protect.
Forgive me if I’m rambling, as you know I think this is an important conservation issue. If I am missing the point(s) of the posts, I’d be happy to curtail my part of the discussion on it. I just think trout get the short shrift on southern tailwaters, because “they ain’t natural!” But perhaps some of my comments apply to other trout waters where the spawn is fished.
This is what happens when it too cold to be out fishing :-).
ScottPS Zach. If we have situation like on the Little Red where there is a bottleneck of 16-17 wild browns, then by all means allow harvesting some, but that is not the situation on most of the White River tailwaters with browns. I am interested in seeing some data on the browns in the White if the biologists ever get that info collected over a large representative sampling and over a longer timeframe than some of their previous data. I am afraid they are too swamped to be doing the data collection that needs done. I don’t think anyone really has a handle on fish per mile and species and sizes. Again about 1996 or so, the data I was told was 94% of the stocked trout were caught out within about 1-2 weeks on Bull Shoals tailwater. I think some of the more recent tagging studies pretty much has confirmed that again in some areas of the river.
Stocking trucks may carry brown trout to your rivers to BOOST your population, but they don’t everywhere.
I understand that Phil and I don’t fish to Spawning fish anywhere but in rivers that do get stocked.
EyetoFish:
I should start out by saying that neither of the two rivers I fish are 1. Natural Reproducing rivers and 2. Crowded with anglers during Fall.I can with say with 99.999% certainty that all the Trophy fish we have caught Summer and Fall are stocked Trout.
I won’t even get into the argument that catching 20”+ Browns isn’t fun or sporting… :-/
It’s nice to pretend we’re doing the right thing and letting the little Trouties spawn only to have the eggs washed away, dried out by falling water, or robbed by the overcrowded and starving stocker Rainbows. I’m glad some feel that way, it makes it less crowded.
I really am a conservative angler. I catch and release 99.9% of everything I catch. But, bottom line; I’m a fisherman not a conservationist. I’ll leave the regulations to the professionals. When they tell me I can’t, then I won’t.
It’s been a good clean discussion guys. Most of the “spawn rapers” won’t speak about it publicly. In fact alot of them will look you in the eyes and lie their ass off about doing it. I fish for Browns all year and the fact that they are in shallow water during the Fall is just the way it is.
This is going to sound kinda self-righteous I know, but what ruined fishing the spawn for me was the feeling like I was hunting in a closed pen.
It does get to me though when my buds post pictures of some of the hawgs they yank out during that the spawn. I know for a fact I could likely get the fish of the year during the spawn but it just doesn’t feel right anymore.
Gettin’ old sucks!I haven’t read all these post, but, if there is gonna be a defense about how it is ok to fish for browns off the reds because they are not native, well, the only native trout in this country is the cutthroat, aside from some rainbows from the California strams and brookies in the east.
paul, I don’t think that is the arguement at all. What I got from all this is that there are those that feel it is O.K. to fish the redds when there is no chance for natural reproduction. I can’t argue with that and no one said anything about it being OK to screw up the spawn because the fish are not native. Everyone who has been around trout fishing for more than a month and does just a tiny bit of reading knows that most trout are not native. There is no moral high ground on this subject. Where it is legal it all comes down to personal choice. There are all kinds of similar points of friction between sportsman all the time. Using an indicator isn’t ethical, using anything but a dry fly isn’t ethical, using dogs to hunt bears isn’t ethical etc… I make no moral judgement on anyone who fishes a spawn as long as they are doing it legally and with as little harm as reasonably possible.
I do not want my fishing to become a source of stress. I am in competition with no one but myself. I have learned the hard way that the easiest thing to do is to ignore and walk away when bubba shows up with his cousins and bait buckets. As long as they are not doing anything illegal there is absolutley nothing that can be done about them being jackasses. You will go crazy trying to “educate” people who have no desire to be educated. Leave it alone and don’t go where people are doing stuff you don’t agree with. It has worked for me.
Steve
Mike wrote:
It’s nice to pretend we’re doing the right thing and letting the little Trouties spawn …
Steve wrote:
There is no moral high ground on this subject.
I actually believe there is a moral high ground on the subject. I just feel I cannot impose it on other anglers angling legally as you said Steve.
But Walton in Complete Angler was very clear and used biblical ethics to teach not fishing to trout on the redds. He says, “But, above all, the taking fish in spawning-time may be said to be against nature: it is like taking the dam on the nest when she hatches her young, a sin so against nature, that Almighty God hath in the Levitical law made a law against it.” See Deuteronomy 22:6. Ethics entered into much of his writing on fly fishing since it was the “contemplative man’s recreation.”
I think you guys are coming full-circle back to the point that ethics/morality are very subjective with the only clear line being drawn between those who follow and those who don’t follow game laws.
“And if you run into people who still insist on fishing the spawn, you could always point them to some local fisheries that have no natural reproduction, and tell them about all the “hogs” there”
The current world record Brown most likely spent his first year of life in a concrete raceway…
Scuplin:
Pragmatically, I probably agree with you…it is easilier to draw more flies with honey than vinegar.
But you may want to rethink implying morality and ethics do not depend on common sense and critical thinking. If you read Walton’s quotation again, you will see there is quite a bit of common sense and good thinking in it. PRIMARY argument–He says it is against nature. Why? Because of the very thing you said…you kill not only the mother on the nest, but the entire next generation.
The secondary argument is what makes a lot of folks choke.
Really? I didn’t know that Zach, that explains alot. I wouldn’t Target those fish either.
What about the 38 that was caught on the North fork?Has anyone heard if the Norfork is getting better after the big development, erosion fallout….that guy ought to be driven out of town…really sucks
Mike: I heard Darrell Bowman say recently that the spawn on Norfork is usually not very good and that most of the successful brown trout spawn is below Bull Shoals dam. Old statistics I heard ten years ago said that G&F did not stock browns above White Hole on the White and that the brown trout spawning success ranged from 0-60% there in any given year depending on water conditions and weather.
That being said, the preceding trout biologist told me that he didn’t believe stocked browns would make it up over about 10-15 pounds and the reason was partly genetic but mainly conditioning. I suspect any fish that large or bigger is going to be traceable as as descendant back to that original stocking via eggs in the late 70s. There are probably at least 3-4 strains of browns in the river system. The ones Whitlock and NAFF put in the White were Bitterroot strain I think. It would be interesting to know the original locations of those Vibert boxes.
The biologists right now do not have a handle on the various strains of browns, rainbows, etc. But in the future, as it gets cheaper, I am sure they will start to do some DNA testing in their research, and once that happens they will definitely have some great tools to answer questions of origins and relationships of the strains of fish between the tailwaters.
Zach: Steve Wright’s book is out of print, but he is supposedly working on a new edition…but I’ve heard that now for several years. There are two used copies on Amazon at the moment available for $75 and $85!
I haven’t chimed in yet, I did once on John’s FFAM Board awhile back about the subject but haven’t really chatted about it since.
I am a self-admitted big fish guy. I love to catch big fish. If given the chance to catch a 20″ stocked fish in a tailwater or a small wild trout on Crane Creek in Missouri than I am going to choose the 20″ fish every day. I am sure it is a fly fisherman lifecycle of some sort, and I am starting to appreciate a certain wild trout stream about an hour from my home more and more….but i wonder if it is due to its convienience or if it is because of the wild nature of the stream.
All that being said, Missouori doesn’t have many streams where trout naturally reproduce. The trout parks of Missouri during the fall and winter are open to C&R fishing and offer a chance to catch some 25″+ fish going through the motions of the spawn in shallow water. Do I fish to them…..every chance I get.
If I am fishing below the dam on the Norfork or Bull Shoals during the spawn am I going to throw at a 20lb fish I see in some shallow water…..yup…..every day of the week. But I am not going to continually throw at it if it isn’t actively feeding.
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