Pennsylvania Trout Unlimited

Our Mission: To Preserve, Protect, and Restore Pennsylvania's Cold Water Streams and their habitats.

The Worth of a Wild Trout

by Ken Undercoffer

The value of stocked trout can be calculated by adding up the cost to raise and transport them to the stream and dividing the total by the number of trout released. As best as I can determine, a typical stocked trout is ready to release in about a year and costs somewhere between one and two dollars to raise and transport to the stream. We stock 5.2 million of them every year, so the total cost is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5- to 10-million dollars. About half of the fish stocked in streams and about 80% of those stocked in lakes are creeled by anglers. What happens to the rest? Nearly all perish before the next spring. Some are taken by predators, but ¾ because they lack the skills needed to capture enough food in the wild ¾ most simply die of starvation.

Now, let’s try to get some idea of the value of a trout bred and born in the stream. Of course they cost nothing to produce. Nature takes care of that. But what we can do is compare wild trout to other game animals. Although this doesn’t exactly put a dollar value on our fishy prize, it does put everything into perspective.

It takes three to four years to grow a freestone brookie like this living jewel to 7 inches.

Back in 1967, Dr . Edwin Cooper of Penn State and Dr. Robert Scherer of Lock Haven University conducted an interesting study [Annual Production of Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalus) in Fertile and Infertile Streams of Pennsylvania]. In this study they compared growth rate and age of native brook trout living in Big Spring Creek, a fertile limestone stream in Cumberland County, and Larry’s Creek, an infertile freestone stream in Lycoming County. The following table shows year-of-life, the number of brook trout present in a one-acre section of stream, average length, and average growth rate.

This study shows the great difference in productivity between a fertile limestone stream, like Big Spring Creek, and a relatively infertile freestone stream, like Larry’s Creek. It also points out how easy it is to quickly crop off most of the larger trout in infertile freestone waters. In such waters trout grow very slowly and the vast majority die before they even reach legal size. It is indeed amazing that brook trout can survive long enough to reproduce in small infertile freestone waters. They are able to maintain their numbers in such streams only because of their ability to spawn at a very early age and small size. Some male brook trout reach sexual maturity when they are but 1 year of age and all but a few males are sexually mature by the age of two. Females mature somewhat slower than males but most are sexually mature by the age of two.

Compared to other game animals, it takes a long time to grow trout to harvestable size. Small game like rabbits, squirrels and grouse are full-size and ready to harvest by the fall of the year in which they were born. Even turkeys, although not trophies by their first hunting season, are certainly big enough to be taken. A comparison with deer is perhaps the best way to evaluate the worth of a wild trout. Antlerless deer are of course legal by their first hunting season. Bucks are legal by the second season and most are taken before they reach the age of three. By comparison, even in the most fertile streams brook trout are just reaching the minimum legal size of 7 inches by the age of three. In the time it takes a wild, stream-bred brookie to reach 10 inches, a buck, if he survives, will be carrying a rack the size of a rocking chair and weigh 150 pounds or more. A 10-inch brookie weighs about 6 ounces. So it seems, pound-for-pound, a legal-size or larger wild trout