Published: February 28, 2009 06:28 pm      

Md. finds more trout for anglers

Astute Maryland anglers who may have compared the 2008 trout stocking schedule with the one for 2009 likely noticed that fewer trout would be going into their favorite stream or lake.

A little quick math (I needed all my fingers and toes and one of our dog Chloe’s paws) showed the decrease in trout to be 5 percent across the board. For example, instead of 3,000 trout being dumped into Piney Reservoir in Garrett County as in 2008, only 2,880 would go there this year. Instead of 7,500 fish getting a new home in Allegany County’s Evitts Creek, there would be 7,225.

Garrett County was to lose 2,720 trout and Allegany County another 1,745. Statewide the numbers would drop from 337,900 to 325,860.

“When we printed the stocking schedule, that was all true,” said Don Cosden of the Inland Fisheries Division. “But that has changed.”

The stocking numbers were projected to be down not because the agency couldn’t afford the fish, but because they could not find enough of them.

The Bear Creek Trout Rearing Station near Accident continues to be closed and will be in that shut-down mode at least for another year because whirling disease was still being found there this past summer.

With that production lost, the state’s trout yield is coming only from Albert Powell Hatchery near Hagerstown.

As in recent years, Maryland is buying trout from private sources.

“When we printed the stocking schedule, we had only two suppliers, but since then have come up with a third,” Cosden said. “So, all of the various waters will pretty much get the same number of trout they did a year ago.”

Adult trout are being purchased from private hatcheries in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New Jersey, according to Cosden. “We think there will be more brown trout this year. We’re buying what is available.”

Cosden said that during the closure of the Bear Creek facility, staff from there have been traveling for daily work assignments to Albert Powell and to a cooperative natural hatchery the state has on Murley’s Branch near Flintstone.

One staff member became a fishery technician stationed at the Mount Nebo Work Center.

Cosden said engineers will attempt to find a way to divert Bear Creek water that flows through that facility so that it no longer enters a rearing pond where the whirling disease was most recently found. That work should begin as soon as Garrett County weather improves, he added.

“We can keep Bear Creek (the facility) open eventually, but without the rearing pond can only produce a maximum of 40,000 trout of about a half-pound apiece,” Cosden said.

Once water is diverted, caged fish will be put in it and will be tested for the disease.

If they come clean, about 10,000 trout could be put in the facility and would be monitored for a while before any decisions are made to reopen Bear Creek on a permanent basis.

Cosden said that production at Albert Powell has been helped out by transferring 1-year-old trout to warmwater hatcheries on the Eastern Shore and in Southern Maryland.

“We transfer them in the fall and they are able to do well during the colder winter months at the warmwater hatcheries. From there we stock them in ponds in the spring.”

That transfer gives the Albert Powell trout a little more room and encourages better growth, according to Cosden.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.