North Fork issue

[tjm]

So, there are springs, that means cool waters at those places and trout will find them.

Will the large predators follow all the way to the cool waters?

The difference between these stream born trout and new stockers is not in the genes exactly but in the gene expression. A single generation of domestication alters hundreds of gene expressions and it takes more? generations for those differentiations to revert. A study here that shows 723 deferential expressions between wild/wild offspring and first generation in the wild of hatchery/hatchery offspring. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10676

The easy way to salvage the wild trout population in this stream is quite simply to close the stream to all trout fishing until it either recovers or reverts to a native fishery. It would also help if it or sections of it were closed to floating and other fishing. Any activity in or on the water has negative effects on the more fragile parts of the habitat. A single footprint might destroy many micro invertebrates, a few macro invertebrates and cause erosion of the bottom.

Of course it will be more popular to throw money at any fox that does not curtail use. But recreational use and conservation are most often in opposition to each other.

[Al Agnew]

Guys, I don't really have a dog in this hunt.  I have no idea whether the dam replacement is good, bad, or in between.  I DO value wild, naturally reproducing trout, but I'm not in love with them.  I do think it would be a shame to stock the river and risk the wild trout in any way.  Pure conservation is impossible here, because Norfork Lake is an unnatural "reservoir" of various fish species that would be rare or non-existent in the river without the lake sitting downstream.  But somewhat pure conservation would be to leave things as they are, with perhaps some tree planting programs to speed the recovery of the banks.  From a recreational standpoint, and yes, tjm, I take your point on the conflict between recreation and conservation, the choice would be to do whatever is necessary to preserve the wild population and allow it to grow, or just value a trout fishery and stock it, or heck, just let the trout try to survive and manage for native species, though I have to say that the trout section would probably never be a good smallmouth section.

As for putting out the letter, my friend is not active on here, and I have not talked to him about publishing the letter, so I'm not going to do it at this point.  If he gets his effort off the ground sending the letter to everybody in his acquaintance and wherever, I'll come back and publish it here if he wants.  I simply thought that this is an interesting topic of discussion at this point.

[MoCarp]

It should be said that the fishery is unique and should be maintained as it has become naturalized even though trout are non native and on the invasive species list ( yes google it)

free flow of fish up and down streams in this case would potentially be harmful...unless trying to re establishment of a native environment was the goal.

back in the day people back east would catch a “ German brown” and toss it under a bush...

trout have been there what from 64 on fifty six years and counting...

at least you don’t have BFers shooting dumpsters full...

resourses should be used to help with the dam

https://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/hunting/2016/02/embracing-9-non-native-and-invasive-species-we-love-hunt-and-fish/

[SpoonDog]

5 hours ago, tjm said:

The difference between these stream born trout and new stockers is not in the genes exactly but in the gene expression.

I don't think that's the case at all.  There's all sorts of literature out there on how C&R has altered vulnerability of some fisheries to angling, and how those traits are passed down from one generation to the next.  I bet if you did a similar study between populations of pressured and naive fish, you'd find differences in gene expression, too. 

723 genes sounds like a lot.  If any of the remaining 72,356 genes in a rainbow trout's DNA allows them to successfully spawn in NFOW, I think we'll be alright.  We'll entertain building a wall, shutting down a fishery,  a river, put folks out of business, because the stocked version of a nonnative fish is only 99% of what the previously stocked version was.  People go bonkers for trout. 

Every single rainbow that's ever lived in the North Fork is ultimately derived from a stocked fish. Whatever genetic information is necessary to produce a wild population was present in hatchery fish, otherwise you wouldn't have a wild population. The presence of a wild population in NFOW is proof hatchery fish can reproduce in the NFOW- otherwise, there wouldn't be a population. 

This species exists from southern California into Alaska because it's genetically diverse.  It occurs from sea level to 10,000+ feet because it's genetically diverse.  Within its native range a beaver dam can divide a population for a century, an earthquake can divide a population for millennia.  Those populations diverge, eventually water finds a way around, and the populations recombine.  An earthquake, an ice sheet, a lava flow can shunt one river into another, with two (or more) distinct populations mating with each other.  A sea-run steelhead can wander into a river next door and swap gametes with the locals.  Drought or floods or wildfire or other events cause populations to blink out, and those habitats are eventually recolonized by fish with a different genetic heritage.  Isolated populations of rainbow trout are part of the species' evolutionary history, but not the entirety.  And probably not the norm. 

We're insisting on a level of genetic "purity" that doesn't often exist in nature, and that often comes at significant risk to a population's persistence over time.  It isn't a reflection of the species' evolutionary history, it's a reflection of our desires. 

Happy new year!

 

[ColdWaterFshr]

1 hour ago, SpoonDog said:

I don't think that's the case at all.  There's all sorts of literature out there on how C&R has altered vulnerability of some fisheries to angling, and how those traits are passed down from one generation to the next.  I bet if you did a similar study between populations of pressured and naive fish, you'd find differences in gene expression, too. 

723 genes sounds like a lot.  If any of the remaining 72,356 genes in a rainbow trout's DNA allows them to successfully spawn in NFOW, I think we'll be alright.  We'll entertain building a wall, shutting down a fishery,  a river, put folks out of business, because the stocked version of a nonnative fish is only 99% of what the previously stocked version was.  People go bonkers for trout. 

Every single rainbow that's ever lived in the North Fork is ultimately derived from a stocked fish. Whatever genetic information is necessary to produce a wild population was present in hatchery fish, otherwise you wouldn't have a wild population. The presence of a wild population in NFOW is proof hatchery fish can reproduce in the NFOW- otherwise, there wouldn't be a population. 

This species exists from southern California into Alaska because it's genetically diverse.  It occurs from sea level to 10,000+ feet because it's genetically diverse.  Within its native range a beaver dam can divide a population for a century, an earthquake can divide a population for millennia.  Those populations diverge, eventually water finds a way around, and the populations recombine.  An earthquake, an ice sheet, a lava flow can shunt one river into another, with two (or more) distinct populations mating with each other.  A sea-run steelhead can wander into a river next door and swap gametes with the locals.  Drought or floods or wildfire or other events cause populations to blink out, and those habitats are eventually recolonized by fish with a different genetic heritage.  Isolated populations of rainbow trout are part of the species' evolutionary history, but not the entirety.  And probably not the norm. 

We're insisting on a level of genetic "purity" that doesn't often exist in nature, and that often comes at significant risk to a population's persistence over time.  It isn't a reflection of the species' evolutionary history, it's a reflection of our desires. 

Happy new year!

 

I hear you.  But the strain that have been there have adapted and thrived in that watershed.  Stockers might alter that gene pool, no?

would be interesting to see what is there now and compare to pre flood populations.

cheers!

[tjm]

What to know something? It doesn't do a thing for me to have any trout in that watershed. Trout are sorta invasive there and if they die out, there is a fair chance of that river becoming a premium Kentucky fishery. Might even get full of sandies, but the chances that I'll ever fish there are slim and slimmer.

I do believe that the way to saving any fragile resource is to leave it alone and not trample it or sell tags to kill it.

I am opposed to all dams and any that fall down or get torn down are the best of kind. The only  good dam is a broken dam. Let MDC spend their money killin hogs and harassing boat mechanics, fcol. 

[SpoonDog]

13 hours ago, ColdWaterFshr said:

I hear you.  But the strain that have been there have adapted and thrived in that watershed.  Stockers might weaken that gene pool, no?

 

They could.  We typically take it for granted that wild populations are more genetically diverse than hatchery fish, and usually that's the case. 

But it's hard to overstate the scale of the 2017 flood.  Take the entire Mississippi flowing past St. Louis right now, double it, then send it down a narrow Ozark valley.  That's the volume of water that was flowing down NFOW that day.  I floated it a couple weeks before the flood, and visited the following September.  The only other damage I've seen on that scale was the Joplin tornado. 

If you had a thousand fish per mile before the flood, maybe 30% of them were adult size.  If 90% of those died, it leaves 30 spawners per mile.  In April.  They have to find enough food, and enough cool water to hide out in, to make it until spawning season in Dec/Jan/Feb.  They have to consume enough food during the growing season to produce eggs, find spawning gravel, build a redd, and do the deed.  And hope that one of those other 29 fish/mile finds them, of the opposite sex, finds them.  There's a lot of long, dead holes on the NFOW.  If there's any predation by stripers or walleye, that population of spawning fish drops even further.   I don't have hard numbers, it's just a thought experiment, but you can see how that population could drop down to just a couple spawning pairs per mile of stream. *If* populations dropped that low, it's likely genetics will be screwed up anyway. 

We have a human hangup that if ten fish are spawning in a riffle it's a miracle of nature.  Put the same ten fish in a hatchery and it's Frankenstein's lab.  Mathematically, it's the same thing.  Genetically, it's the same thing. 

It's a stupid analogy, and I apologize in advance, but: imagine the stocked fish of the 1960's are a supreme pizza.  Cheese, sausage, pepperoni, green pepper, onion, mushroom. 

Subsequent generations of wild fish aren't adding Canadian bacon and pineapple (on a 50y time scale).  They're subtracting green pepper and onion.  They aren't wasting energy on stuff they don't need to survive. 

The flood knocked out sausage, pepperoni and onion. 

What you have left is a cheese pizza.  Cheese pizza is fine, but cheese pizza is not a supreme.  While a cheese pizza may be equipped to survive a catastrophic flood, there is no guarantee the next disaster will be a catastrophic flood.  Sausage and bacon may be better equipped to survive catastrophic drought.  But you don't have sausage and bacon.  You have cheese pizza.  Because you everyone is better off cxdswq1` (whoops, dog needed consoling because of fireworks.  happy new year everyone). 

Because the 2017 flood wiped out so many fish, there's a realistic possibility the remaining fish in the river are less genetically diverse.  You can use hatcheries to reintroduce bacon.  Or green peppers.  Or black olives.  You can add Canadian bacon or pineapple. Or you can argue cheese pizza is the best kind of pizza because it's the only kind of pizza we have.  Or hope black olives and pepperoni appear magically, out of nowhere. 

 

 

 

 

[Devan S.]

 

So what stream side genetic testing kits are you all using on these fish?

Why are these trout any "better" than any other that's been in the public waters of our state 6+ months. 

Every bit of this non-sense is in ya'lls head purely because MDC has made a big deal of the blue ribbon streams.  

If you poach river bass to extinction, you beg for stocking to replace. Somehow though with "Stream bred" rainbows and a million year flood and we cant alter the genetics on a one time basis?

If MDC was to go in the middle of the night deep into winter and stock 25,000 fish along the river. I bet NOT a single person would be the wiser. 

[Ham]

9 minutes ago, Devan S. said:

 

So what stream side genetic testing kits are you all using on these fish?

Why are these trout any "better" than any other that's been in the public waters of our state 6+ months. 

Every bit of this non-sense is in ya'lls head purely because MDC has made a big deal of the blue ribbon streams.  

If you poach river bass to extinction, you beg for stocking to replace. Somehow though with "Stream bred" rainbows and a million year flood and we cant alter the genetics on a one time basis?

If MDC was to go in the middle of the night deep into winter and stock 25,000 fish along the river. I bet NOT a single person would be the wiser. 

I live on the White River. I like fishing it. I have caught literally thousands of trout from the White. So, I have more than little experience with stocked trout.

Prior to 2017, I made a trip or two in the fall after most of the drunken floats were out of the way for about 5 years or so. I loved fishing up there. I didn’t catch a lot of fish each trip, but the ones I caught were healthy, pretty, no damaged fins, and all fought HARD. I didn’t catch any fish under 12 inches and several of the largest Rainbows I have ever caught I caught up there. I had a 23 inch and two others over 21 inches. I caught them in heavy current and they fought really well.

Those fish WERE SUPERIOR to the stocked Rainbows of Spring River, Taney, White River, and all the Trout parks. 
I’m not super romantic about trout. I enjoy catching them, but I do not hold them in higher regard than other fish. 
 You are of course entitled to your opinion, but it would carry more weight it you had fished NFOW prior to the 2017 flood. 

[laker67]

How did the trout resorts fair after the 2017 flood? I know one is River of LIfe and not sure of the other. Justin Spencer I think. And what would their opinion be on this topic?