My apologies for being a bit behind following up on this topic.
First I'd like to address this statement from Billfishes post,..."Stocking trout in areas where they don't holdover or reproduce in any significant numbers, as it was intended, is a waste of our license fees and a waste of a valuable resource.........unless you are a heron, mink, merganser, osprey, eagle, otter or some other fish-eating bird or mammal."
Stocking trout in areas where they have zero chance of reproducing and little to no chance of holding over has long been a part of the overall trout program in NJ. The Div. has an obligation to provide trout fishing opportunities to all trout stamp purchasers within a reasonable distance from their homes. The Div has always understood that by and large the trout stocking program in this most densely populated state is a 'Put & Take' fishery and that along with that comes a certain amount of wild predator loss. Obviously the greatest amount of such loss occurs in ponds and lakes, followed by small streams. This knowledge is why the presence, absence and abundance of predators, particularly cormorants, is always required to be documented by those who conduct the Opening Day Trout Surveys each year. I myself have seen ponds where the ospreys and bald eagles were doing far more damage to the stockies than cormorants, for example Tuckahoe Lake in northern Cape May County. Then again I've done Opening Day Surveys on lakes where there were no cormorants or other birds of prey at all, so it's a very site specific problem that simply cannot be addressed by generalizing all impoundments as having avian predator issues.
Likewise those same surveys are documenting the amount of angler utilization of the various water bodies as well as angler success. All of this info along with the population densities and locations of license/stamp sales, public access to a given water body, distance to the next nearest trout fishing opportunity and much more data goes into compiling the statewide stocking plan for each year, including determining what water bodies, the number of stockings, numbers of fish per stocking, etc. This is why we see changes from time to time in water bodies, locations on streams, number of fish, frequency of stockings and so on.
Getting back to the Flatbrook C&R section, I have to admit I am in a small way partly responsible for the reg change there. I had actually proposed a change back in 2002 that stipulated making it a typical Year-round TCA, and in my proposal the special regs would have extended clear down to the Walpack bridge, an additional 2.25 miles. That proposal however went basically nowhere despite my creating a nice 3 page written proposal that was handed to each council member as well as Lisa Barno and Pat Hamilton personally. Being an un-affiliated, lone angler I simply didn't represent a large enough group of 'interested parties' for the proposal to be taken under consideration by the F&G Council even though it had the support of both Lisa and Pat. There was no angler survey behind it, no scientific data to support it, and the stream section in question had such a large following of avid anglers that without that support there was simply no way that change would be passed. However I did connect with a gent who is local to the stream, was an avid supporter of the idea, and had the free time needed to take on the challenge. He spent many years, a great deal of his own free time, a fair amount of many composing, printing and distributing surveys, and compiling whatever data and angler support he could, all the while working with the state biologists to determine if the proposal was viable from a waterway position as far as quality, flows, habitat and stream temps. All in all it took nearly 10 years and a tremendous amount of work all around for that reg change to be passed. Now, it has taken another 5 years of follow-up work by the biologists to try to determine if the change was a good move, and frankly I'm not seeing much data to support continuing the current C&R regs there. Between 3 years of electro-fishing surveys and now 2 years of telemetry studies, the data to date simply doesn't support the present regulatory restrictions in my humble opinion. Perhaps the C&R regs section could be shortened to only include the area from the top of Blewitt down to the Roy bridge, while returning the area from 206 down to Blewitt to the former FFO regs. I say this because the data seems to indicate that the upper section I outlined has shown little to no improvement in holdover or wild pops, while the Blewitt to Roy section has shown better holdover generally speaking, although not much in the way of wild trout numbers improving.
Again my apologies for the long post, I just saw so many different points that I felt I could voice my opinion upon. BTW, those wild brook and the brown that I posted the pics of from last weekend all came from a fairly heavily stocked stream. I did catch 1 holdover rainbow that day but the vast majority of the trout were wild brookies. Again, there is no single solution or resolution to the quandary of stocking over wild pops and what negative or positive impacts this may have.
If you were to read Pat Hamilton's Wild Brook Trout Genetics Study you'll see that even in wild brookie waters that had been stocked with hatchery strains of brookies for many decades, the 2 strains have somehow managed to remain, in many of her survey waters, genetically distinct. There are a number of theories as to how this could occur, the bottom line is that just because a waterway is stocked it clearly does not mean an existing wild population would be genetically polluted or otherwise negatively impacted.
Finally, take the time to peruse the 'Coldwater Fisheries Management Plan", the link to which was posted by Mark B. above and I'll re-post it here. Tremendous amounts of both data and information to be gleaned there, many items that may give some ideas for program and/or regulatory proposals to offer the Freshwater Fisheries Bureau staff for consideration. The link...
https://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/cwfmp.htm
Okay, 'nuff of my ramblings!
