Should They Stock Browns On The Eleven Point?

[Justin Spencer]

After fishing the point the other day I noticed that much of the river looked like prime brown trout habitat where some monsters could lurk. Wondering if anyone had any good arguements against this, evidently the forest service doesn't want anymore introduced species in the river that are not currently there, yet continue to stock rainbows. The hellbender seems to always be an arguement, yet the ones they find are malformed which is not the brown trouts fault. I for one wish they would do it, I think they would get bigger there than in the NFoW, more and better deep holes.

[jdmidwest]

I think the real reason is the direct competition of what most on here agree is a reproducing rainbow population that is already there. It would probably put an end to the reproducing rainbows.

And the fact that we really don't need anything else competing with the native trophy smallmouth and goggle eye that the stream is currently managed for on its entire length.

I would personally like to see more attention to the dwindling populations of native walleye and pickerel on that river and have them back to the numbers that I used to catch back in the 80's.

[Justin Spencer]

They stock browns on the NFoW and 20"ers are caught on a regular basis. We have no rainbow stocking and still have large self-sustaining population. What I don't understand is that if there is a good reproducing rainbow population why stock rainbows at all. The thing I like about the NFoW is we have our own strain of rainbows that continue to evolve for our specific river. If you do stock rainbows why not stock browns as well and see who does better, I think the two species occupy their own niche, and while you do catch them side by side you do find the concentrations of them in different water, or on different streaches of river.

[Brian Sloss]

We had a long drawn out debate on this old chestnut a couple of years ago that degenerated into name calling. It has been proposed a few times by the MDC, but the forest service always blocked it siting the hellbender situation. I would personally love to see browns in the Eleven Point as I agree with Justin that we would grow some huge brownies, but it is not likely to ever happen. There is lots of great brown trout habitat in this river.

[Justin Spencer]

I think we could start up a little fund and might find a hatchery truck breaking down needing to unload their fish, say around Turner.

[gotmuddy]

I don't like the idea of stocking anything myself. I think the rivers should have natural fish or at least self sustaining populations.

[ozark trout fisher]

I think browns would be cool on the Eleven Point. There's no doubt that river could grow some hogs with all its deep pools and abundance of minnows, crayfish, stoneflies and the like.

But that river is already as close to perfect as a river can get... Why mess with that? It's a great trout and smallmouth bass river as it is, very possibly the best in the state. And as some have already mentioned, a bunch of big predatory browns could really do a number on the small wild rainbows. And not to mention the possibility that a bunch of trophy browns could really draw the crowds in like they do on the upper part of Taneycomo or the Current River-and the lack of crowds is one of the greatest appeals of the Eleven Point.

I vote for continuing to manage the river the way it is now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[MaxDrown]

I would love to see browns in the Eleven Point.

[ColdWaterFshr]

All for it. It would be a primo brown trout stream.

[snap]

At one time, I was 100% in favor of stocking browns because, I agree, it would be a great river to produce some real hogs. But over the last few years, I have changed my mind. The reason is because of some of the rainbow hogs I have seen or heard about...eg....the 14 lber that 16 year old from Birch Tree caught (pic was posted on here a year or two back) and my last two trips produced 20+ inchers for a member in my group. I have witnessed more bigger rainbow over the last 5 or so years and I believe the rainbow fishing is getting better...making me fear the additions of browns would have a negative effect on what is already taking place!!! Those big deep holes work well for huge bows also!!!!