Court OKs stocking of trout in state
A story that barely registered as a blip in the mainstream media last week is a landmark moment for trout fishing in California.
At the state Court of Appeal in Sacramento, the Center for Biological Diversity lost its lawsuit to stop the Department of Fish and Wildlife from stocking trout in the state’s lakes.
In a separate action, the court also ruled that the DFW was wrong to impose a series of requirements on private companies that stock lakes, in a case brought by the California Association for Recreational Fishing.
Hundreds of lakes and reservoirs, including those in the Bay Area, would have no trout if they were not stocked, and hundreds of private ponds on ranches would not have bass, bluegill and catfish if they weren’t planted, either.
The Center for Biological Diversity was able to block trout plants temporarily in 2008 when it argued that the state must complete environmental studies that show potential impacts before any plants are permitted, such as to the red-legged frog, for instance, even if frogs didn’t exist in the lakes being planted.
The court upheld the DFW’s statewide Environmental Impact Report on trout plants, which will allow the hatchery program to continue. The DFW already had transformed its hatcheries to produce a strain of rainbow trout called a “triploid,” which does not reproduce, and therefore can be planted in reservoirs that have feeder streams with wild fish.
“I am pretty happy about this win for CDFW,” said
Jordan Traverso, the department’s communications director and an assistant to Director Chuck Bonham.
She tempered the remark by adding that it was unlikely, as anglers now hope, that the program will be able to stock more and larger fish or expand to more lakes.
Paying for fish
California fishing licenses are the most expensive in America — $47.01 per year, $61.62 with a second rod stamp, more with other permits — and state law mandates that $1 of every $3 from fishing licenses sales goes to trout programs. In addition, DFW records show that anglers are owed fish from years when planting minimums were not met.
“One third of sport-fishing- license revenues goes into HIFF (Hatchery and Inland Fisheries Fund) to support trout-hatchery operations,” Traverso said. “HIFF covers hatchery operations, stocking and the Heritage and Wild Trout Program. Not just trout plants. There is no way to make up for lost planting beyond what our annual HIFF budget act appropriation allows.”
According to an in-house survey, 63 percent of those who buy licenses fish for trout. Without the plants, many lakes and reservoirs would offer little fishing.
For instance, in the greater Bay Area’s 10 counties, there are 74 lakes. Public access for hiking or biking is permitted at 57 of them and some form of boating is allowed at 37. No access is allowed at 17, including the five major lakes on the Peninsula. Of the 57 lakes with public access, 15 lakes (not including special plants at ponds or very small reservoirs) are stocked with trout in winter and spring.
These include San Francisco’s Lake Merced North, Contra Loma in the Antioch hills, Lafayette near Highway 24, Chabot in Castro Valley, Del Valle and Los Vaqueros near Livermore, Quarry/Horseshoe in Fremont, San Pablo in El Sobrante, Shadow Cliffs in Pleasanton, Temescal in the Oakland hills, Bon Tempe and Lagunitas near Fairfax, Ralphine near Santa Rosa, Cunningham and Sandy Wool in San Jose, and Pinto near Watsonville.
The problem at these lakes is that the DFW does not plant enough trout to create viable fishing programs and that the trout are often very small. In that vacuum, private concessionaires run programs at several lakes, such as at Los Vaqueros, San Pablo, Del Valle and Chabot, where they charge a daily fishing fee, and in turn, that money is used to buy trout from private hatcheries in order to give anglers real hope when they make their cast.
Born to be wild
Outside the Bay Area, trout stocked in mountain reservoirs can take on the qualities and appearance of wild fish over time. At Iron Canyon Reservoir in Shasta County, for instance, it takes only a few months for the trout flesh to turn from white to red, from a diet of freshwater crustaceans and midges, and for its appearance to change as well, as they develop longer noses (instead of the hatchery stubs) and brighter spots.
At some large reservoirs, hatchery managers have stocked high numbers of fingerlings, or juveniles, in late fall so the trout grow to adolescence over winter and spring as if wild. Later as adults, the fish act, feed and look as if they are wild.
For the Center for Biological Diversity, based out of Arizona, the unsuccessful attempt to use the Endangered Species Act to get its way in California exposed it as an outer fringe environmental group.
Long-term studies show that in some lakes where all trout have been removed, the frogs disappeared, anyway, wiped out by chytrid fungus. To save the frogs and other amphibians, the focus needs to be on what causes chytrid and how to stop it.
Many believe the true mission of the center was to shut down fishing, not save the frogs. The center has taken the same approach in an attempt to shut down logging, according to Sierra Pacific, where the Center for Biological Diversity tried to use the Endangered Species Act as a hammer against timber-harvest plans. In one recent period, the center filed 19 legal actions against Sierra Pacific for its timber-harvest plans and lost all 19 of them, according to Sierra Pacific.
For this weekend’s fishing prospects, Bon Tempe and Lagunitas lakes in Marin County, and Chabot, Del Valle, Quarry/Horseshoe, Lafayette and Los Vaqueros in the East Bay hills were all stocked with trout in the past week.