Keep Little Red browns?

[Quillback]

Picked up a copy of the AR Democrat Gazette yesterday at the grocery store - I seldom read the paper anymore, but if I think of it, I'll get a Thursday copy as it has an outdoors section.

Story in there advocates for keeping browns on the Little Red, according to AGFC there are TOO MANY (LOL) 14-16 inch browns and the competition for food keeps them from growing to trophy size.  There are wild and self sustaining, AGFC does not stock them in the Little Red.  

What was also interesting is that even though there are a lot of them in the river, they are tough to catch compared to stocked rainbows so the perception amongst anglers is that there aren't that many, but electro-fishing by AGFC confirms that there are loads of them in the river, they are just tougher to catch.

That's a brief summary, and is not my opinion, never have fished the Little Red,  just relaying what AGFC is saying.

Personally I have no problem with catching 14-16 inch wild browns, but I infer from the article that AGFC is hearing feedback from anglers that they would like to have bigger fish to catch.

 

[Ryan Miloshewski]

Saw the same situation in the Driftless when I was up there. The browns were eviscerating the brookie and rainbow populations and completely taking over certain streams without being stocked. They wanted you to keep every brown in the 12-14" range you caught. 

[Johnsfolly]

1 hour ago, Quillback said:

Picked up a copy of the AR Democrat Gazette yesterday at the grocery store - I seldom read the paper anymore, but if I think of it, I'll get a Thursday copy as it has an outdoors section.

Story in there advocates for keeping browns on the Little Red, according to AGFC there are TOO MANY (LOL) 14-16 inch browns and the competition for food keeps them from growing to trophy size.  There are wild and self sustaining, AGFC does not stock them in the Little Red.  

What was also interesting is that even though there are a lot of them in the river, they are tough to catch compared to stocked rainbows so the perception amongst anglers is that there aren't that many, but electro-fishing by AGFC confirms that there are loads of them in the river, they are just tougher to catch.

That's a brief summary, and is not my opinion, never have fished the Little Red,  just relaying what AGFC is saying.

Personally I have no problem with catching 14-16 inch wild browns, but I infer from the article that AGFC is hearing feedback from anglers that they would like to have bigger fish to catch.

 

If I remember correctly there was a brown from the Little red that was a previous world record brown. Seeing that brown trout can grow to well over 40 inches and also pounds if given the right conditions, I am amazed that many of us (myself included) are happy with catching ones that are only 10 to 15% of their growth potential.

The AGFC is likely in for a difficult time to convince folks to keep those 14 to 16 inch fish.

[Gavin]

Think the Collins World Record Fish was a stocked Triploid. Wild fish just don’t have that growth potential, so I see no issue with eating some if the biologists recommend it.