Originally Posted by Bent Rod (Post 352449)

I would be more the willing to drop more cash on trout stamps every year if that means a permanent solution is found, even purchase stamps for other species as someone else here mentioned to help with the cost. Acquiring from PA or NY is a decent short term answer but what if those states have issues as NJ has this year?

Originally Posted by acabtp (Post 352459)

this late in the year, i doubt that any other state has many surplus stocker sized trout ready to go; we would have had to put our order in a year ago.

it seems to me that the biggest factor in this problem is our "all the eggs in one basket" approach to rearing the brook, brown and rainbow trout at the pequest hatchery and only at the pequest hatchery.

by comparison, vermont (the other state where i do a lot of trout fishing) also stocks a similar amount of fish to NJ: 600,000 yearling trout and salmon and 15,000 2+ year old trophy trout every year. but they do it with five coldwater fish culture stations instead of just one. this is for a state with a population fifteen times smaller than new jersey (so much much less money from taxes to do it with). they don't do trout stamps up there either, it's included with your license.

if NJ had a second coldwater hatchery, it bears to reason that this furunculosis outbreak at pequest would have had much less of an impact than it did where our one and only trout production center basically lost everything.

i don't blame anybody at pequest, i am sure they were working as hard as they could to make sure this didn't happen. this kind of things just happens when you are raising a lot of animals in high density conditions. nobody notices when a barn full of chickens gets sick and dies because there are so many other barns full of chickens. but when our one and only trout hatchery gets wiped out... well, we are noticing.

Originally Posted by Michael82929 (Post 352485)

Permanent solution? This is the first time this has happened since Pequest started. This hasnt been a repeat occurence.. Let's see this happen a second or third time before we need to think like that.

Other states have had similar issue that what NJ is facing with at one time or another. You do not want to work with neighboring states when it comes to sharing of fish.

Case / Point - when this first happened, PA was interested in buying the trout we destroyed. Didn't happened based on the liability.

Originally Posted by Bent Rod (Post 352506)

Just because this is the first year this has happened doesn't mean history can't repeat itself, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. They already had to euthanize twice this year, why invite the possibility 2 or 3 more time by putting a band aid on it? :confused:

I'm no expert but i drove past the hatchery and maybe this is overly simplifying but wouldn't just completely sterilizing and installing an overhead roof be a simple and permanent solution?