Planning a trinity trip questions

[robdog]

I don't know if anyone has touch this subject, but on the Trinity DFG is asking all anglers to take out Brown Trout that is caught. The limit is 5. I am a catch & release guy, but I will keep the browns now. I guess the Browns are eating the Salmon & Steelhead. Pass this info on to anyone who fishes this area.

[jbird]

Wow. Thats too bad that such a wonderful fish has become an invasive species. Killing them would be hard for me to swallow. You could fill your pickup with water and cart them up here to some of our lakes

Jay

[jhaquett]

What about the sea-run browns? What's the story there? I thought the Trinity has a healthy population of them?

[Chris]

What about the sea-run browns? What's the story there? I thought the Trinity has a healthy population of them?

They are non natives that were introduced. I think DFG is doing the right thing with this policy.

[jhaquett]

Yea I know they are introduced I was curious how they began the sea-run process though that is kind of interesting...

[mr. 3 wt.]

and you know this how? Or are these just your assumptions? So I suppose we shoot every bird that eats fish as well. Steelhead are having another banner year so I can assure you the browns in the system aren't hurting their numbers. The dismal salmon season isn't because of the browns that are swimming around.

[bigtj]

I talked to the DFG biologist at the Willow Creek weir about a month ago, he said the se-run thing is a myth as well. They have found some young browns down in the Klamath estuary. However they don't find browns in the willow creek or junction creek weir. If there was a true sea-run they'd get them in the weir, and they'd see them moving upriver. The idea of sea-runs probably started because of their light color and size (attributable to enviornmental conditions) and speculation that this was caused by the fish going out to the ocean.

As far as a "banner year" that's a function of the hatchery. Most of this run is composed of hatchery fish. The runs on the trinity are a fish-factory phenomena, to some extent this masks the health of the wild run. It's been shown that hatchery fish don't spawn successfully in-stream, so the effect of the browns is mostly on the wild run. Could there be a stronger wild run without the browns? Hard to say. But it's something to think about. Bottom line is browns are pretty hardy critters, and like it or not, they're here to stay, no matter what limit we put on them.

[ycflyfisher]

The general concensus is that the brown trout population on the Trinity is migratory but not anadramous. We typically do see 200-600 browns each year over the JC weir but you've got to go back a decade or more to get to a single brown moving over the WC weir. This simply doesn't follow the same trend of anadramous fishes in the basin which always have higher counts over the WC weir.

The reason harvest of the browns is being encouraged by the USFS is that the brown trout population in the upper river has exploded in recent years, and the concensus is that the browns generally exploit hatchery parr, and the inriver migration patterns are illustrative of this.

Browns were introduced to the watershed at a decades defunct facility that was located near WC.

[ycflyfisher]

Browns were also propigated at the existing facility in Lewiston, but that pratice was discontinued, because the browns were residualizing in the upper river.

[jhaquett]

Doesn't matter if they are sea-ran or not, I won't even be able to remember how to get to the Trinity river when I'm hooked up with a TRUE sea-run brown next semester in Denmark!

Speculation probably comes from the fact that the browns were planted from original populations that may have been sea-runnning individuals

Whatever, they're still fun to catch