Thursday, September 27, 2007

Trout Drought


The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has announced that its fall trout stocking will be curtailed due to low water conditions on mountain streams. Some streams will only see half of their normal numbers of stocked trout until rain brings Carolina streams back to normal levels.
We have been carefully monitoring water levels and aquatic habitat in delayed-harvest waters over the last eight weeks and have decided to reduce the number of trout stocked until conditions improve and available habitat increases,” said Kyle Briggs, fish production supervisor. “We try to match our stocking rates to the habitat conditions in individual streams.

“Because stream levels are extremely low right now, it makes sense for us to adjust trout stockings accordingly.”

When western North Carolina gets some much-needed rain and stream flows improve, biologists will stock 213,000 fish — 85,195 brook trout, 42,610 brown trout and 85,195 rainbow trout — as originally planned.
Maybe we should all go down to Florida for the opening of gator fishing season.

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