the reality is though that as usual, we have a NATIONALISED organization applying a NATIONALIZED POLICY which has no capacity to take account of local issues and factors affecting trout populations or in fact the true interactions of all stocked brown trout with so called 'naturally ocurring /breeding indiginous brown trout stocks" in all situations.
to qualify this veiw at risk of stating the obvious i wish to outline the following questions
which the E.A. is choosing to ignore in making the sweeping change in stocking policy which it has announced.
(1) -what is a 'wild' indiginous brown trout?
(my answer)
-in an ideal world in my veiw there should and can only be one correct and true answer to that question and that is a creature that has been naturally generated in the water it is living with no stock-fish genetics whatsoever in its lineage.
(now that is a trout worth protecting !!!)
however, in the real world a true wild trout is a rare thing indeed these days and whilst i whole heartedly agree that any such remnants of true wild trout (for that is what they are) -should be identified and protected in the way proposed by the agency on a case-by-case basis.
the E.A.'s answer to what is a wild trout? : -
- a trout that has been resident in a river for five years or more..... !!
but the simple reality is that as almost all trout rivers the length and breadth of the country have receved stockings of brown trout on a regular basis for well over a 100 YEARS OR MORE!
as such the 'train' that this idea should have been on has long since left the station.
the sudden 'new' idea is that the best breeding/surviving brown trout are the ones that have been bred there......... well i wonder?
-ever heard of a darwinian theory / process known as natural selection?
-quite simply if a brown trout having been farm-reared is unable to adapt and properly reproduce in the wild river environment it now finds itself then its blood line will FAIL,
-just as its wild bred counterparts bloodline would also fail in much the same way
(2) why would the agency consider such a move and on what basis of science?
i wonder if the agency has accounted for the basic facts that :-
when a farmed brown trout (fertile) is stocked into a river it is typically around the age of just two years old (i.e. a very young and inexperienced animal) and typically weighs between 12oz and 1lb 8oz as body weight is the usual 'trigger' for the development of sexual maturity (coming into breeding condition) it will almost certainly attempt to spawn before the end of the year in which it is stocked, having considered the 'inexperience thing' -is it really rocket science to understand why the reported poor spawning performance of stock fish?
alternatively in the wild trout world the fish take many years to reach such size having not been all but force fed to attain maximumum size in the shortest possible time,
-the wild fish takes many years to grow and has many more years to hone its spawning skills
doubtless failing or acheving poor or limited succes along the way.
it is a well established proven fact that in many other better studied/understood animal and bird (even wild ones) species around the world early attempts at breeding often fail to produce viable young primarily by reason of the 'adults' in-experience
(3) issues such as exccesive poaching should also be taken into account and from personal experience the agency is less than effective at countering this single issue with its massive potential to pemanently damage naturally self generating stocks,
even fair angling has potential to do significant damage to self generating stocks and without the option of fishery owners to re-introduce replacement potential breeding capable fish then little can be done to mitigate that damage.
(4)and what of the case where a river has suffered devastating total anihalation of all fish as a result of pollution ?
-as our river did some years ago with a massive influx of raw sewage which was caused by flash floods inundating the sytem and causing overspill into the river
,
without restocking our brown trout fishing and club were all but finished
. (mecifully the sea trout were still away at sea when that occured
)
we now have 'wild' fish appearing again (some 7 years on
) all are small and none are large enough to be considered survivors of that incident
, so all are considered to be progeny from the farmed fish that we restocked with (paid for by the polluter ) so it is apparrent that our stock are all ultimately of farmed origin
(5)one definite potential downside that i can see to stocking triploids is that as is well publicised by the fish farmers that triploid (triple chromosome female) brown trout do not exibit the appetite suppression behavioural charcteristics exibited by their diploid couterparts at spawning time
(i can hear you ask what does that matter?) -well quite simply mother nature in her wisdom
turns down/reduces the feeding response to protect the spawn from the trout themselves.
therefore brown trout (triploids) that are still fully 'on feed' are simply going to become a new threat to the 'wild'/spawning trout as they will simply consume the spawn
(6)-as for the seatrout issue , our river retains its seatrout run both in numbers and size
(and as we speak, sea-trout smolts are present in very large numbers)
and all of this despite our stocking of farmed brown trout for a great many years which in no way seems to detrimentally affect the sea-trout runs in our experience
(7) on a final note my suspisions are that this move has significantly more to do with the lobbying
of those with the hidden agenda of furthering the profitability of future farmed brown trout production
as: -
(a) we will have to buy more brown trout on a regular basis
(b)brown trout as triploids grow much faster,
(i.e. better conversion of food to body weight ratio than diploids) -so much cheaper to produce
and are more disease resistant owing to a greatly reduced loss of condition during the
winter months (spawning time)
and all of this in the name of conservation..... of brown trout......
................................................or is it fish farmers profits ????
