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SilverCreek

Stocking lakes in the Uninta Mountains

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Silver, are you posting this as a good thing or a bad thing?

I have several thoughts/questions, none of them "good".

 

1) How many of those fingerlings actually survive that drop? People have jumped on my videos because I casually toss fish back into the water. An insult to the fish, I guess, and a possible cause for injury. Those fish are, essentially, being hurled in at top speed.

 

2) Why do they have to stock these lake every 2 to 3 years? If the lakes are so inaccessible that they can only be stocked by airplane, they aren't being "fished out".

 

3) Is trout mortality so bad that they can't survive on their own?

 

4) Are the lakes so poor in forage that the fish are starving to death? If that's the case, this is the worst case of animal cruelty ever filmed. Every 2 to 3 years they slam fish into the water, the ones that survive that slowly starve to death.

 

5) I'm thinking, if the lakes can't support a fish population, they shouldn't be stocked. Where else could they put those fish that would be more beneficial?

 

It's a neat video of how to kill thousands of fingerlings ... as far as I can tell.

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Average life span of trout in the wild is three years, I've read and extreme life spans from 6-10 years depending on species, iirc.

They used pack mules to stock most of the inter-mountain areas back in the 1800s when it was all US fish Commission work.

I've seen trout in Idaho lakes that were aerial stocked back in the mid '60s, many areas that a tanker truck can't go are accessible by jeep, horse, foot etc. I was told that the rainbows were stocked by air in the US Wilderness areas streams by dumping in beaver ponds, I know we caught them in areas that were at the end of a two track.

Those 10000'-12000' high lakes are often glacier fed and have near vertical outlets. Many of the lakes never had trout til they were stocked.

A two or three hour horse back can put you some very inaccessible by tanker country. Some places a mile of hike can take you where no truck ever went.

 

So, if we go down the cruelty road, we could make a valid case against all C&R fishing, or aquariums. I'd rather not go there. Keeping small children in school is cruelty. children are more important than fish to most people and still we tolerate schools.

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Silver, are you posting this as a good thing or a bad thing?

I have several thoughts/questions, none of them "good".

 

1) How many of those fingerlings actually survive that drop? People have jumped on my videos because I casually toss fish back into the water. An insult to the fish, I guess, and a possible cause for injury. Those fish are, essentially, being hurled in at top speed.

 

2) Why do they have to stock these lake every 2 to 3 years? If the lakes are so inaccessible that they can only be stocked by airplane, they aren't being "fished out".

 

3) Is trout mortality so bad that they can't survive on their own?

 

4) Are the lakes so poor in forage that the fish are starving to death? If that's the case, this is the worst case of animal cruelty ever filmed. Every 2 to 3 years they slam fish into the water, the ones that survive that slowly starve to death.

 

5) I'm thinking, if the lakes can't support a fish population, they shouldn't be stocked. Where else could they put those fish that would be more beneficial?

 

It's a neat video of how to kill thousands of fingerlings ... as far as I can tell.

 

Estimated 95% survival rate. Smaller fingerling fish are better able to survive the drop.

 

Generally Trout need moving water to spawn. So they don't naturally reproduce in many backcountry lakes.

 

https://watch.opb.org/video/oregon-field-guide-aerial-fish-stocking/

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In California when they do aerial drops like that I think the fish are also sterile, with an expected life span of about three years, hence the replenishing.

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As Jaydub said, 95% survival rate which is higher than the old way they used to stock these lakes. In the past they used to carry the fingerlings up on horses in containers.

 

Since trout are unable to reproduce in these pothole type of lakes, stocking is the only way to provide recreational fishing. There are other fisheries where trout and salmon cannot reproduce. If that was a criteria, there would be no salmon fishery in the Great Lakes on the Wisconsin side.

 

Yes there is food for the trout in the high mountain lakes, but the growing season is short so they do not get very big.

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I grew up thinking that all rainbow trout were stockers. Essentially they are in all but the Pacific drainage, but at the time all I knew was they came from trucks of planes. Stocking fingerlings keeps the "they just stocked trout, let's catch them all before they get over the shock" crowd away, and as the fish grow up in the lake or stream they acquire wildness that grown stockers never develop. Both in action and in taste.

I imagine that most of the "destination" trout fishing waters in the lower 48 are stocking dependent, there are a lot of trout fishers out there.

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When Carter was President he got into fly fishing and became an addict. (Previously on his farm ponds in GA he was a meat fisherman but only got baptized into the first church of the long rod later in life.) Anyway, his weekends at Camp David often featured exclusive fly fishing the private streams there that got stocked each time by USMC helicopters. In later life he found a need to actually polish his skills to take trout not fresh from the hatchery,

 

The only poachers that got in there were a few mink.

 

Rocco

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