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Today's Trout Stocking Mtg. in Hackettstown update

Jersey Devil said:
Not the point.... point is I'm not alone in this argument. Concerned officials take a sober point of view also. County Official sees the threat??
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How many have a fisheries biology degree or a degree in fish pathology?

Again, you're worried about the state introducing a disease into the environment that already exists in the environment and came from the environment, but nothing you seem concerned about addresses that simple fact. This is out there now in our lakes and streams. If the DEP Commissioner decides to have 100% of the Pequest trout killed and not stocked, this disease will remain in the very same waters you fear may become contaminated. Ever fish PA? It's all over that state. Have you written letters to PA's Fish & Boat Commission stating your concerns?

I'm out. I think I've made my point.
 
Rusty Spinner said:
How many have a fisheries biology degree or a degree in fish pathology?

Again, you're worried about the state introducing a disease into the environment that already exists in the environment and came from the environment, but nothing you seem concerned about addresses that simple fact. This is out there now in our lakes and streams. If the DEP Commissioner decides to have 100% of the Pequest trout killed and not stocked, this disease will remain in the very same waters you fear may become contaminated. Ever fish PA? It's all over that state. Have you written letters to PA's Fish & Boat Commission stating your concerns?

I'm out. I think I've made my point.
Click to expand...

I know this disease is in the wild and I am not concerned. There are lots of nasty pathogens that are in the wild, but sometimes when they are brought into artifical settings things mutate. It would be a shame to release some super disease into our waterways. That said. I trust of F&G biologists and trust that they have thought of, and tested for worst case senerios and will only proceed if prudent. I am not sure why they allowed Mercer lake to refuse the fish. Sends a back public message that the fish are unsafe which is not true. Is there still the option of killing all the fish and not stocking on the table? I thought this was all settled.

All I care about is that signs go up in non stocked locations to save the wild fish I love pressure.
 
Rusty Spinner said:
How many have a fisheries biology degree or a degree in fish pathology?

Again, you're worried about the state introducing a disease into the environment that already exists in the environment and came from the environment, but nothing you seem concerned about addresses that simple fact. This is out there now in our lakes and streams. If the DEP Commissioner decides to have 100% of the Pequest trout killed and not stocked, this disease will remain in the very same waters you fear may become contaminated. Ever fish PA? It's all over that state. Have you written letters to PA's Fish & Boat Commission stating your concerns?

I'm out. I think I've made my point.
Click to expand...

Well if it is as simple as that, then why not just stock all the fish as usual since the disease is there anyway? There has to be more to the equation than that and my guess is that somewhere in all of the decisions there is a $ lurking as a constant.
 
FIN-ITE 34 said:
Well if it is as simple as that, then why not just stock all the fish as usual since the disease is there anyway? There has to be more to the equation than that and my guess is that somewhere in all of the decisions there is a $ lurking as a constant.
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Actually, states like PA told NJ's Division to simply stock as normal. The peer reviewed presentation http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/pdf/2014/peq_furunc_presentation.pdf given by the Division's fish pathologist was voted on unanimously as being a highly conservative plan and not one scientist in that review expressed concern with the state's plan. I'm not a fisheries biologist, so I ran the plan past ours and no concerns. At some point in time, you need to trust science. If the only biologists reviewing our plan were state employees, and given the distrust many have about state employees, that would be one thing. But scientists from the Great Lakes states and Canada and native Indian tribes all vetted the plan and showed no concerns. PA went so far as to tell our Director, Dave Chanda, that if NJ was planning to kill these trout, he'd send over his trucks to take them off our hands and stock them across the Delaware into PA streams. PA has dealt with furunculosis in about half their hatcheries for as long as 27 years so far.
 
Seems to be a very large difference of opinion by the educated on what should be done. So if PA doesn't seem to have a problem with stocking infected fish, why would we need to be so, conservative?
 
Oliver10 said:
I know this disease is in the wild and I am not concerned. There are lots of nasty pathogens that are in the wild, but sometimes when they are brought into artifical settings things mutate. It would be a shame to release some super disease into our waterways. That said. I trust of F&G biologists and trust that they have thought of, and tested for worst case senerios and will only proceed if prudent. I am not sure why they allowed Mercer lake to refuse the fish. Sends a back public message that the fish are unsafe which is not true. Is there still the option of killing all the fish and not stocking on the table? I thought this was all settled.

All I care about is that signs go up in non stocked locations to save the wild fish I love pressure.
Click to expand...

Do we know if this is definitely happening? Would really be a good idea.
 
FIN-ITE 34 said:
Seems to be a very large difference of opinion by the educated on what should be done. So if PA doesn't seem to have a problem with stocking infected fish, why would we need to be so, conservative?
Click to expand...

Out of an abundance of caution. Again, other states told NJ it was being overly concerned. The state admitted to just that in their public meetings on this topic. I don't know about you or others, but I prefer a more conservative approach in life over a more liberal approach every time.

For the record, my knee-jerk reaction when I first learned about this issue last fall was to immediately kill 100% of the stocked trout. But knee-jerk reactions are seldom the correct reactions or so I've learned in my own life.
 
In the last year or two, I heard about a disease outbreak among smallmouth bass in the Delaware River, and if I'm correct, it was furunculosis. (What else would it be...). From what I heard, written in the Freshwater Report column of The Fisherman magazine, it reduced the river population. If that's true, maybe certain bodies of water in the wild go through cycles of intense infection, although not so bad as what a crowded raceway of trout suffers.
 
The Delaware didn't get hit too hard - at least where I fish - but the Suskie is really down. Pollution and low warm water that lowers oxygen puts stress on the fish. Diseases and other mysterious things can be trouble. I don't think the full range of issues is understood. The other thing I am beginning to sense is that furunculsis is more a symptom than a disease. It basically means bacterial boils, but the bacteria can be different. The Delaware seems to have held up better than most warm water rivers I fish, but that isn't reason for complacency.

IMHO, NJ is taking a conservative stance compared to other states. However, relying on hatcheries entails some sort of risk.
 
I caught a fluke last summer with a disease boil on its underbelly. Put it back for sure! I have also caught stripers with disease boils, but I think this particular disease is different, contacted in Chesapeake Bay. I read Horton's (forget first name) account of the Chesapeake, and if I remember correctly, he wrote that the forage shift from menhaden to whatever the bass can scrounge up is making them vulnerable to disease. I also read somewhere, if it's at all reliable, that you don't want to touch the disease markings on stripers. That bacteria can get on your skin and give you trouble. Maybe the stripers have something other than furunculosis.
 
Bruce Edward Litton said:
I caught a fluke last summer with a disease boil on its underbelly. Put it back for sure! I have also caught stripers with disease boils, but I think this particular disease is different, contacted in Chesapeake Bay. I read Horton's (forget first name) account of the Chesapeake, and if I remember correctly, he wrote that the forage shift from menhaden to whatever the bass can scrounge up is making them vulnerable to disease. I also read somewhere, if it's at all reliable, that you don't want to touch the disease markings on stripers. That bacteria can get on your skin and give you trouble. Maybe the stripers have something other than furunculosis.
Click to expand...

Fluke/summer flounder have been known to get furunculosis. But that furunculosis, just like the same bacteria that causes it in salmonids such as are in Pequest, is not transferable to humans. Striped bass are susceptible to IPN which is what shut down the Connettquot hatchery out on Long Island a few years ago now.
 
mtthwnvk said:
What are they going to do with them after they old-yeller them? Fertilizer with diseased fish sounds pretty gnarly...


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Click to expand...
Fish-fry at the next open house?
or...
Sell them to a cannery....
 
I think that's a very good question as to where the dead fish are going. Do the math, at a conservative fish weight of 6 ounces I get an estimated dead weight of 21 tons. Will the dead fish be sold for fertilizer or dog/cat/monkey chow food? Or are they going to a landfill?
 
JeffK said:
The fish in the fall went to the landfill.
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Not for nothin'....couldn't the division make some $$$ selling them to Purina, or something, then use those $$$ to clean up the funk....

but I am sure their is too much red tape?
 
lightenup said:
Not for nothin'....couldn't the division make some $$$ selling them to Purina, or something, then use those $$$ to clean up the funk....

but I am sure their is too much red tape?
Click to expand...

I keep reading similar posts about donating to food banks, selling to restaurants, etc. The Division has no mechanism in place to deal with a massive amount of trout beyond stocking them in Division trucks nor do food banks. These are headed to the landfill and lesson(s) learned. So long as they get things right moving forward, this will be a one-time concern. Time to sanitize the raceways, move the broodstock to other raceways, build a roof, and introduce genetics from disease resistant fish while focusing on just rainbows for a few years which seem to be resistant already, at least the ones in Pequest.
 
How about we all show up with plastic bags on trash day. I got a load of tomato plants that will be going in and they could use those dead fish.
 
FIN-ITE 34 said:
How about we all show up with plastic bags on trash day. I got a load of tomato plants that will be going in and they could use those dead fish.
Click to expand...

Then your normal tomatoes can get boils and you can sell them as heirloom lumpies!


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I haven't weighed in on this topic much but here are a few things the bother me about this. I think the mortality of wild fish will go up because they will be getting pressured more. This won't be from the meat hunters it will be from us the c& r crowd. Once all the guys that fish klg see that there is not many fish in there they will spread out to other places they may not usually fish. How much of a pounding can the upper sb take. It is not very big. There will be a lot more mortality from these fish being hooked and released more often. If we get a hot dry summer the klg will be desolate by fall. I don't fish nj much anymore but am I the only one that is pissed at the state. I would think they would have some kind of contingency plan for something like this. The hatchery used to be state of the art but now it is antiquated. Why hasn't the state updated the facilities thru the years? Where is our money going? It's just like when the pheasant cages collapsed in the Oct snow storm. Screw the hunters we already have their money. Lucky for me I hunt mostly quail and they get them from pa. This state always waits till something bad happens before they spend the money to update things. All the roads I use to go hunting are so bad I can't get to half my spots. They used to grate them every year but haven't in three. I called and they said there is no money. I pay decent money to hunt and fish in nj and I'm getting tired of always getting screwed.
 
Pequest has spent a lot of $$ to upgrade, but mostly in areas like more efficient motors to lower electrical costs, back-up generators so the fish don't die in big storms when the electric goes out, a new well or two, etc. I guess that they never had the foresight to see that birds of prey could bring in an endemic disease, so now they have had to scramble and make new plans to thwart this issue going forward. They are planning to tap a corporate business tax fund designed to cover many of these costs. Not sure which roads you mean, but if you're talking about the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, that is a federal and not state issue.

In the end, it was diminishing license sales over the 80s, 90s and 2000s that have finally bottomed out and are slowly climbing back up that did in funding for the Division. That blame is mostly ours for not dragging our kids away from TVs and computers or for letting a 10 year old specialize in a single sport that he/she now plays year round with no time to go hunting or fishing with Dad. Life is like a pendulum, though, and I think it will bounce back to a large degree. That's the optimist in me.
 
trico mike said:
I haven't weighed in on this topic much but here are a few things the bother me about this. I think the mortality of wild fish will go up because they will be getting pressured more. This won't be from the meat hunters it will be from us the c& r crowd. Once all the guys that fish klg see that there is not many fish in there they will spread out to other places they may not usually fish. How much of a pounding can the upper sb take. It is not very big. There will be a lot more mortality from these fish being hooked and released more often. If we get a hot dry summer the klg will be desolate by fall. I don't fish nj much anymore but am I the only one that is pissed at the state. I would think they would have some kind of contingency plan for something like this. The hatchery used to be state of the art but now it is antiquated. Why hasn't the state updated the facilities thru the years? Where is our money going? It's just like when the pheasant cages collapsed in the Oct snow storm. Screw the hunters we already have their money. Lucky for me I hunt mostly quail and they get them from pa. This state always waits till something bad happens before they spend the money to update things. All the roads I use to go hunting are so bad I can't get to half my spots. They used to grate them every year but haven't in three. I called and they said there is no money. I pay decent money to hunt and fish in nj and I'm getting tired of always getting screwed.
Click to expand...

I understand your concern about the upper South Branch, but with the exception of the Claremont and KLG, during a normal stocking season the upper SBR takes a constant pounding for 6-8 weeks, and quite a few wild trout are killed during this period (I have no stats but just my observations living 20 minutes away). This was also observed by the DFW on their study of the Flatbrook under general kill regs. I know that there is a certain amount of mortality with C&R, but if the anglers know what they are doing and voluntarily go barbless I am hopeful that the number of wild trout killed will be less than a normal year.

As for the financial state of NJF&W, there is no doubt that they are strapped tight. I did see that the pheasant and quail stamp alone is $40, but for $33 I purchased my fishing license and trout stamp. I have found the trout fishing in NJ to be so improved that I will probably not buy an annual PA or NY license, but only purchase short-term licenses if I am getting away for a couple of days. In addition to the KLG and the other TCAs and WTS, we have the old fly fishing only 4 1/2 mile stretch on the Flatbrook as artificials only C&R 365 days/year.

Sorry you feel you are getting a raw deal from NJ, but with economic conditions being what they are we cannot always expect the latest technologies and state of the art facilities. Sometimes it takes an emergency to get funding, such as the loss of 120,000 brook trout. Now there will be a covering put over some of the runways and the purchase of more disease resistent trout to replace the browns and brookies.
 
trico mike said:
I haven't weighed in on this topic much but here are a few things the bother me about this. I think the mortality of wild fish will go up because they will be getting pressured more. This won't be from the meat hunters it will be from us the c& r crowd. Once all the guys that fish klg see that there is not many fish in there they will spread out to other places they may not usually fish. How much of a pounding can the upper sb take. It is not very big. There will be a lot more mortality from these fish being hooked and released more often. If we get a hot dry summer the klg will be desolate by fall. I don't fish nj much anymore but am I the only one that is pissed at the state. I would think they would have some kind of contingency plan for something like this. The hatchery used to be state of the art but now it is antiquated. Why hasn't the state updated the facilities thru the years? Where is our money going? It's just like when the pheasant cages collapsed in the Oct snow storm. Screw the hunters we already have their money. Lucky for me I hunt mostly quail and they get them from pa. This state always waits till something bad happens before they spend the money to update things. All the roads I use to go hunting are so bad I can't get to half my spots. They used to grate them every year but haven't in three. I called and they said there is no money. I pay decent money to hunt and fish in nj and I'm getting tired of always getting screwed.
Click to expand...

Not disagreeing with your frustration, but I also can't help but wonder if this a bigger problem endemic to living in one of the most populated areas in the country, and trying to partake in things that thrive where there are, frankly, less humans. I'm not saying us jersey folk should quit on fishing and hunting, but since we are forced to rely on things like stocking seasons and not on natural fish and wildlife I wonder if we need to look at it through different expectations.

It sucks but, it doesn't necessarily seem like the problem is the hatchery as much as it is that there is a need for the hatchery. I wouldn't be surprised if they address this issue with new structures etc and in, say, 2 decades there's a new way a bird could enter and it happens again.


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mtthwnvk said:
I wouldn't be surprised if they address this issue with new structures etc and in, say, 2 decades there's a new way a bird could enter and it happens again.
Click to expand...

One of the plans is to introduce disease resistant eggs from the Rome, NY federal hatchery so that we develop disease resistance in a few years and even if the disease gets back in, it won't be an issue. That is what states like PA have done and it's working over there. I'm hoping they can go solar on the new roofs which takes another item off their checklist and reduces costs associated with the facility by doing so. They had a plan to add solar in the fields once, but other more pressing matters got those funds instead.
 
Rusty Spinner said:
One of the plans is to introduce disease resistant eggs from the Rome, NY federal hatchery so that we develop disease resistance in a few years and even if the disease gets back in, it won't be an issue. That is what states like PA have done and it's working over there. I'm hoping they can go solar on the new roofs which takes another item off their checklist and reduces costs associated with the facility by doing so. They had a plan to add solar in the fields once, but other more pressing matters got those funds instead.
Click to expand...

Gotcha, it all sounds good. I wasn't saying they would short change this update, was just thinking, because of the nature of a hatchery you mentioned: stacked up fish, stressed fish etc. it wouldn't surprise me in the future if something happened again. Maybe it's not diseased boils, maybe it's something else, I probably won't put the blame on the hatchery then either, but rather chalk it up to the nature of trying to farm fish and the inherent risks that come along with it


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mtthwnvk said:
Gotcha, it all sounds good. I wasn't saying they would short change this update, was just thinking, because of the nature of a hatchery you mentioned: stacked up fish, stressed fish etc. it wouldn't surprise me in the future if something happened again. Maybe it's not diseased boils, maybe it's something else, I probably won't put the blame on the hatchery then either, but rather chalk it up to the nature of trying to farm fish and the inherent risks that come along with it


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Click to expand...

Good point. If you get a chance, here's a link to the Division's fish pathologist's report and, if I recall, he covers some of the other possible nasties that can infect trout in hatcheries and/or in the wild. Things like IPN, whirling disease, etc. It's nice we have a pathologist back on staff after years without one following a retirement some years ago.

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/pdf/2014/peq_furunc_presentation.pdf
 
Rusty Spinner said:
Good point. If you get a chance, here's a link to the Division's fish pathologist's report and, if I recall, he covers some of the other possible nasties that can infect trout in hatcheries and/or in the wild. Things like IPN, whirling disease, etc. It's nice we have a pathologist back on staff after years without one following a retirement some years ago.

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/pdf/2014/peq_furunc_presentation.pdf
Click to expand...

I wonder if you ever get tired of being a wealth of information


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