Natural Born Trout

[trythisonemv]

11 minutes ago, navery said:

No, rain water and run off control that. Rain isn't steady or necessarily cold enough to keep creek flows and temps consistent enough for a healthy, naturally occurring spawn ......

How come thy spawn I spring river Crane Creek niangua hurley creek a lit of tiny feeder creeks... unless you're referring to the browns 😂 

[tjm]

1 hour ago, navery said:

No, rain water and run off control that. Rain isn't steady or necessarily cold enough to keep creek flows and temps consistent enough for a healthy, naturally occurring spawn ......

I can see that there'd be a lot of warm runoff  with all the pavement in that area, it's why I'm surprised the creeks are cool enough to support any kind of trout activity.  And it's rare that we get rain at or below 44F. But the entire lake and the way it's managed makes reproduction seem even less likely. If I had caught a few baby trout there, I would have assumed they were escapees from the hatchery.

I had believed that even most of our springs are coming out of the ground too warm (~56F?)  for successful trout spawning (although cool enough for them to grow and survive)  and that only winter chilling and the late winter timing of rainbows make it possible for them to reproduce naturally in any of our streams.  

[tjm]

1 hour ago, trythisonemv said:

How come thy spawn I spring river Crane Creek niangua hurley creek a lit of tiny feeder creeks... unless you're referring to the browns 😂 

Rainbow spawn here in the coldest months, Turner said Dec through the first week of Feb, those already cool streams (spring fed throughout and relatively shaded) get even cooler with winter freezing and the smaller they are the colder they will get as the frigid air counteracts the ~56F groundwater. Rainbow need water temperatures 42F-52F for spawning. Ice in Dec. helps with getting those streams cool enough. And while brown trout require about the same temperatures, they are fall spawners , Sept-Dec., and our streams are still carrying summer heat a that time.

[trythisonemv]

4 minutes ago, tjm said:

Rainbow spawn here in the coldest months, Turner said Dec through the first week of Feb, those already cool streams (spring fed throughout and relatively shaded) get even cooler with winter freezing and the smaller they are the colder they will get as the frigid air counteracts the ~56F groundwater. Rainbow need water temperatures 42F-52F for spawning. Ice in Dec. helps with getting those streams cool enough. And while brown trout require about the same temperatures, they are fall spawners , Sept-Dec., and our streams are still carrying summer heat a that time.

I get that but what about Carolina and Georgia?  Tennessee ? They are not colder and have browns  naturally  reproducing? If water temps trigger spawning in most fish then why wouldn't browns spawn later? WHAT triggers brown spawn if not temp? I'm very interested in this topic

[tjm]

39 minutes ago, trythisonemv said:

WHAT triggers brown spawn if not temp?

Photoperiod I would guess, it's the trigger for most wildlife.

 

40 minutes ago, trythisonemv said:

what about Carolina and Georgia?  Tennessee ?

I'll take a guess, or two; the reproduction is in tailwaters cooled by lake depth? the tailwater is free flowing stream with suitable shoals,  structure, flow and depth ? (similar to the White below BS) 

It might also make some difference in how the water is released or in the height of the dam as to how cold the discharge flow is. 

[bfishn]

11 hours ago, tjm said:

Photoperiod I would guess, it's the trigger for most wildlife...

Yep, I could buy eyed RT eggs any time of the year I wanted from Troutlodge. They maintain multiple strains of rainbow brood stock that spawn at different times, and manipulate the photoperiod as needed to maintain year-round availability to producers.

The biggest impact of temperature for hatching is time-to-hatch, with colder temps leading to longer incubation periods.

When you think of rainbow trout as livestock (as I do), much of the mystery goes away, and the literature is abundant. The hatchery manual I used was from the 1940s, and already fairly advanced at that time, the main difference being at that time they still ground fish for feed. Bagged feed is a much-appreciated improvement.

[tjm]

By the 1940s they had 60 plus years of experience of manipulating rainbows.

It seems to me that in the '50s-'60s there must have been some trout rearing setup at every good spring in SW Mo. and NWA, might not have been but I remember dozens of them. And most streams in the area must have had trout stockings at some time too.

@bfishn how much time passes between the swimup stage and the fully scaled 3" fingerlings I catch?

[trythisonemv]

35 minutes ago, tjm said:

By the 1940s they had 60 plus years of experience of manipulating rainbows.

It seems to me that in the '50s-'60s there must have been some trout rearing setup at every good spring in SW Mo. and NWA, might not have been but I remember dozens of them. And most streams in the area must have had trout stockings at some time too.

@bfishn how much time passes between the swimup stage and the fully scaled 3" fingerlings I catch?

The were still doing this in the 60 and 70s... we had friend who were approached by some guys from kc that wanted to put trout In a spring on their property in late 60s early 70s. They are still in there with no help... 

[tjm]

just thought of another question too, you mention buying eggs and S Turner talked about where the Mo hatcheries obtained eggs back in the day, and that made me wonder; does each MDC hatchery produce their own eyed eggs, or are they from one hatchery or do they buy them from an outside source?

[tjm]

30 minutes ago, trythisonemv said:

They are still in there with no help... 

I'm not aware of any left in the streams locally but there were a few places that had trout long after the rearing experiments failed.