It's out with the trout: Creeks stocked for big day

On the bank of Stony Brook in Hopewell, a few hundred trout were in for a surprise.

Bundle by bundle, the trout - fresh from a Pequest Trout Hatchery fish truck - plummeted into the water and swam on to temporary freedom.

"They normally throw [the trout], because when they hit the water, they seem to react better and they swim off," said Jim Sciascia, chief of information and education for the state Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Fish & Wildlife.

The drop-off, one of several on Stony Brook on Tuesday, was a small part of Fish & Wildlife's seasonal, statewide trout-stocking effort. In the lead-up to opening day of trout season on April 9, it will release about 180,000 hatchery-bred trout into New Jersey's lakes, streams, and ponds, Sciascia said. By the end of May, it will have tossed 570,000 fish into the water.

"People think of 'the good old days,' " Sciascia said. "You know, 'Oh man, back in the early 1900s or 1950s, trout fishing must have been so much better.' But it was not the case. Today is better than it's ever been."

According to Sciascia, the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the opening of the state-run Pequest Trout Hatchery in 1981 have yielded cleaner water and larger, higher-quality fish. The DEP's stocking schedule maintains a more consistent population, he said.

And fishing in New Jersey is on the rise: Revenue from license and trout stamp sales increased from about $5.16 million in 2005 to about $5.83 million in 2010, Sciascia said.

On opening day, waterways such as Stony Brook will be the sites of a familiar bustle.

"On the first day of trout season, you get there and it's like being on the Garden State Parkway to the Shore," said Jeff Tittel, director of New Jersey's Sierra Club chapter.

Though Tittel expressed concern about water pollution from fish hatcheries, he said the trout stocking plays a positive ecological role - the stock trout are akin to a "canary in the coal mine," he said.

"Part of it shows that many waters of New Jersey are clean enough that if you stock the trout, they'll be able to live in it," Tittel said. ". . . I think it educates people in particular about the importance of nature and clean water."

Besides the trout-stocking program, which replenishes populations in the fall and winter with fewer, larger fish, the Division of Fish & Wildlife manages several fronts. New Jersey's older state hatchery, the Charles O. Hayford State Fish Hatchery in Hackettstown, raises between 2.5 million and 3 million warm-water fish each year.

Hatcheries are "not all about raising fish," Sciascia said. DEP biologists and officials monitor and help protect water quality, and the Pequest hatchery supports a Natural Resource Education Center, complete with an "education pond" for school groups.

The younger and casual anglers are more likely to hit the streams with family this April, Sciascia said. Accordingly, the newest trout are smaller than those released in the fall, averaging about 10.5 inches.

Contrary to popular worries, Sciascia said, there are enough trout to go around, as spring stocking lasts through May.

"Those who don't like the crowds have plenty of opportunity to get a lot of good fishing in," he said. The department also throws in about 5,000 "breeder fish," which are a couple of years older and average 17 to 24 inches, an incentive for the more ambitious anglers.

Streams with particularly good breeding habitat are capable of hosting trout offspring, but in the more typical "maintenance streams," every trout season brings a new wave of hatchery-bred fish. The DEP keeps its hatchery stock separate from the wild stock to guard against the transfer of disease.

"Each state entity oversees and manages the stocking process in a regulated way," said Erin Mooney, press secretary for the conservation group Trout Unlimited. "Fish are treated well, they're healthy."

June and July will bring the end of the majority of stocked trout, she said: "Most trout in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are either cooked by anglers or cooked by rising water temperatures."

Not all of them go to the frying pan. Sciascia cited a DEP poll from last winter that showed 50 percent of anglers throw all their fish back.