Hopatcong catches new trout
Many request stock despite fishing decline
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
BY BRIAN T. MURRAY AND SALLY GOLDENBERG
Star-Ledger Staff
Heeding a call from community leaders, lakeside businesses and a local fishing club, the state Fish and Game Council unanimously agreed yesterday to continue stocking Lake Hopatcong with trout.
"We've had a lot of good public input on this," said Martin McHugh, director of the state's Division of Fish and Wildlife. "We came to understand the culture and tradition of fishing up there (Lake Hopatcong) and we took it into account."
Fish and Game Chairman Scott Ellis said the state received about 1,300 correspondences, mostly from the Lake Hopatcong community, on a plan to eliminate seven large lakes from the state's annual trout stocking program beginning next year.
Public input will continue to be accepted until the plan is finalized and adopted sometime this fall.
The trout elimination plan was a direct response to plummeting sales of state fishing licenses, brought on by a decline in public interest in fishing.
Only 132,668 licenses were sold in 2003, compared with224,946 in 1991. Additionally, the sale of trout stamps, which are required for any angler to pursue trout, dropped from 145,438 in 1991 to 75,864 in 2003.
The original state plan was to redirect the 25,890 trout normally stocked each year at the seven lakes to more heavily fished rivers and about eight smaller, urban lakes that offer better public access. The state Bureau of Fresh Water Fisheries, which raises and stocks 2.2 million fresh water fish a year around the state, including 575,000 trout, said the redirection would entice more people to fish.
Still on the trout elimination list are the Spruce Run Reservoir in Hunterdon County, Cranberry Lake in Sussex County, the Manasquan Reservoir in Monmouth County, Pompton Lake in Passaic County, the Canistear Reservoir in Sussex County and Mountain Lake in Warren County.
Although Lake Hopatcong has been spared, it will get about 1,900 fewer trout a year than the 10,440 it has been getting. But, McHugh said, the trout will include very large brood-stock and the hardier brown trout, which are better able to survive in lakes.
Lake Hopatcong also will continue to received regular allotments of hybrid striped bass, channel catfish, walleyes, muskellunge and tiger muskies the state has annually stocked there, he said.
"It's a partial win," said Arthur Ondish, head of the Lake Hopatcong Commission. "Anything is better than nothing. I think it should be fully stocked, but there's still time. The decision isn't made yet."
Bill Clark, an angler with the 1,200-member Knee Deep Club, a fishing group, was torn.
"I'm a little disappointed because I thought we had given them enough ammunition that they would agree to continue to stock the same number of trout as they did before," he said.
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Trout anglers reel in victory
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
By ROD ALLEE
STAFF WRITER
UPPER FREEHOLD - Lake Hopatcong will continue to get its annual stocking of trout after all.
But starting in 2006, six other favored fishing spots - including Canistear Reservoir and Pompton Lake - won't, as state wildlife planners begin a trade-off: Some of the trout that went into those lakes will now be used to stock suburban and urban ponds, including Potash Lake in Oakland and Dahnert's Lake in Garfield.
Bowing to pressure from North Jersey anglers, the state Fish and Game Council on Tuesday reversed an initial proposal and voted to continue stocking in Lake Hopatcong next year. But it enacted the other changes, as of spring 2006, to spur the flagging sales of fishing licenses by bringing the king of freshwater fish to more populated areas.
Lisa Barno, manager of fisheries for the state Fish and Wildlife Division, said that since 1991, the sale of fishing licenses has plunged by 41 percent, to 135,000. "It's an economic issue," she said.
Barno's original plan called for stopping trout stocking in Lake Hopatcong, the nine-mile-long lake in the counties of Morris and Sussex that is one of the region's premier sports fishing destinations. At public hearings last month, though, the Knee-Deep Club, a powerful fishing club with about 1,200 members in the Lake Hopatcong area, complained vociferously.
Barno reported Tuesday at the Fish and Game Council meeting that 142 public comments were against her plan for Hopatcong, while only two comments were for continued stocking of Pompton Lake and three in favor of continued stocking of Canistear Reservoir in Vernon.
The other four lakes in which the stocking of brown, rainbow, and brook trout will end in 2006 are Mountain and Cranberry lakes and Manasquan and Spruce Run reservoirs.
More than 13,000 boats are registered for use on Lake Hopatcong, and fishing is a major tourist draw there. Bill Clark, head of the Knee-Deep Club, said there are five fishing shops at the lake "plus the diners and luncheonettes and bars. You know the biggest fish are caught in the bars and diners."
The Knee-Deep Club itself stocks trout at Lake Hopatcong; in the last decade it has spent $250,000 doing so, said Clark. Tim Clancy, the club's spokesman who attended Tuesday's council meeting at the Assunpink Wildlife Management center in Upper Freehold, said the club would be ordering $18,000 worth of brown, rainbow and brook trout for this season.
The Lake Hopatcong anglers did not win the whole battle, however. The Fish and Game Council voted to cut the trout stocking there by nearly 20 percent, from 10,440 to 8,490, as well as to add more brown trout to the mix, include larger fish, and stock earlier in the spring when tourists concentrate on trout before turning to warm-water fish in the summer. Trout season begins April 9 this year.
The cut angered Clancy: "Two thousand trout will be eliminated from Hopatcong," he said. "The concept is to benefit the revenue stream. Yet when the perception sinks in that there are less fish at Hopatcong, some people might keep on going and do their fishing in Pennsylvania."
Clark said the Knee-Deep Club began stocking Lake Hopatcong in 1953. He said 3,000 trout stamps - add-ons for fishing licenses - are now sold at the lake each year, and that this has risen steadily since 1991. Fishing licenses cost $22.50 a year, $12.50 for senior citizens; trout stamps cost an added $10.50 a year.
"It is ironic that the council wants to cut our stocking allotment in order to raise interest in buying fishing licenses, while in fact we're selling more than ever at Hopatcong," he declared.
The only Fish and Game Council member to vote against the change to Lake Hopatcong stocking was Jack Schrier, who also is a Morris County freeholder.
Barno was clear in explaining that the changes she sought were not based on the biological management of trout. She explained that trout dumped into "warm-water bodies" - shallow lakes or ponds - do not survive the hot weather and thus do not reproduce as do trout placed in cold streams. This would be the case, she added, no matter if the warm-water bodies were lakes such as Hopatcong or the little impoundments such as the 21-acre Potash, just north of Pompton Lake, and three-acre Dahnert's in Bergen County.
The state raises trout at the Pequest Trout Hatchery in Warren County and stocks waterways before the opening of the spring trout season in early April and then again late in the year.
"The reason [for the changes] is economic impact," Barno said. "The fish we stock in such places are about 10-1/2 inches long, making them 18 months old. The average cost to us is $1.50 a fish. That is half the market value of about $3, what you would pay at a private hatchery.
"Some of the fish saved will be put into these smaller ponds," Barno said.
"This will make it handier for more people to go fishing, and for youngsters to get started in fishing. The rest of the fish saved will be put into 16 major streams, what we call trout-maintenance streams where they will survive the summer."
A few other changes were made to the fishing code for 2006, said Barno.
Four small streams that have proved "self-sustaining" for trout will not be stocked; the fall trout stocking program will be cut from 50,000 fish to 20,000, but instead of 9-inchers being released, 12- to 16-inch trout will be stocked; and the winter trout stocking program will be cut from 10,000 to 5,000 fish, but again, larger fish will be released.
The only change effective this year, she added, is that browns, rainbows and brooks will be added earlier in the trout season to ponds and lakes.
After settling the trout issue Tuesday, the Fish and Game Council discussed with a lawyer its plan for another bear hunt next fall. In a recent decision, the state Supreme Court said that to justify a hunt as a bear-control option, the council must come up with a comprehensive bear management program agreeable to the state environmental commissioner.
