Deer, trout management similar

Some anglers oppose keeping brown trout on the Little Red River, but none have explained why they believe keeping trout will harm the fishery.

Keeping brown trout on the Little Red River is not a new or even a revolutionary idea. Anglers have been allowed to keep as many as five brown trout per day smaller than 16 inches on the Little Red River for a while. We assume that anglers are aware of the regulation, especially considering it was enacted after a public comment period.

This brings us back to the original question of how removing an overabundant size of brown trout would hurt the fishery. Apparently, not removing them has not helped the fishery produce trout larger than 16 inches.

A parallel situation in deer management offers some context.

In the fairly recent past, it was illegal to kill does in much of Arkansas. The non-harvest of does is equivalent to non-harvest of trout. Over time, non-harvest of does led to radically disproportional sex ratios in large segments of our deer herd.

Until 1998, you could also kill any size buck in Arkansas. That is equivalent to having no minimum length limit for trout. As a result, the overwhelming majority of deer killed in Arkansas every year was 11/ 2- year old bucks. That greatly limited the number of bucks that grew to maturity, which greatly diminished ability of bucks to grow the size antlers that excite hunters.

In 1997, the commission enacted the 3-point rule for bucks, which required a legal buck to have at least three points on one antler. This was equivalent to a minimum length limit. It alleviated hunting pressure on yearling bucks and shifted hunting pressure to 2-year-old bucks. By extension, a greater percentage of bucks survived to their third year, an age when they become progressively harder to kill.

At roughly the same time, the commission encouraged hunters to kill does. Hunters resisted at first, claiming that killing female deer would obliterate the herd. However, it was clear that the habitat in much of the state did not produce enough food to support the number of deer it contained.

Hunters were conditioned to seeing 20-30 deer on a food plot in the evening, but they seldom saw mature bucks. It took a long time for hunters to accept that seeing fewer deer in favor of seeing bigger, healthier deer.

As the results of those regulations have coalesced, it is no coincidence that Arkansas has produced three of the top 20 all-time antler racks in the last 10 years. The difference between bucks and trout is that protecting yearling bucks has not produced a stacked age class of bucks. Hunters remove a lot of mature bucks from the herd every year. Younger bucks take their places, and a percentage of those grow to sizes that delight hunters.

Meanwhile, Arkansas hunters set new harvest records almost every year. In the 1980s, when my career as an outdoor journalist began, it was inconceivable that Arkansas hunters would check more than 200,000 deer annually.

How does this apply to trout fishing in the Little Red River? According to Game and Fish Commission fisheries biologists, there are too many 14- to 16-inch trout in the Little Red River. Trout plateau at that size due to several reasons, including insufficient food to feed the number of trout in the fishery. Not harvesting trout is a micro-example of what would happen to our deer herds if hunters stopped killing deer.

The central question is if avid trout anglers on the Little Red River are satisfied with the quality of the brown trout they catch, and also with the number of high-quality brown trout they catch. If the answer is yes, then there is no reason for anglers to modify their attitude about keeping and eating brown trout.

If the answer is no, then maybe some behavioral adjustments will improve the fishery. To quote an old saying, if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.