Anglers who take to area streams, lakes and ponds for trout fishing this season may find themselves catching less fish due to a decrease in the amount of fish that will be stocked by the Department of Environmental Conservation.
The DEC plans to stock 2.1 million brown, rainbow, and brook trout in 307 lakes and ponds and approximately 3,000 miles of streams this spring, down 15 percent from last year.
Officials said the decrease is due, in part, to two large-scale outbreaks of fish disease at the Rome Hatchery which caused a stocking reduction of approximately 320,000 fish.
The Rome Hatchery is one of the DEC’s largest, with an annual production of nearly 160 thousand pounds of brook, rainbow, and brown trout.
The reductions, however, are not expected to affect the stocking of two-year-old (9 to 11 inches) fish, and will only affect the stocking of yearlings (3 to 8 inches.)
Fish health concerns at the hatchery began in November 2011 when large numbers of brown trout fry succumbed to a number of diseases.
The loss left the DEC facing a shortage of the fish scheduled for stocking in spring of 2013.
In 2012, it was discovered that 175,000 surplus fish from the state of Virginia had become infected with the bacterial fish disease furunculosis, which then spread to Adirondack and mixedstrain brook trout.
In addition to the bacterial disease, many of the fish were also infected with a parasite called Ich, which contributed to increased fatalities.
This forced the DEC to eradicate approximately 131,000 fish from the infected population, citing the long-term health of the state’s fish hatcheries.
The DEC expects that 102 less lakes and ponds will be stocked this year.
However, many of the ponds not stocked will still have holdover fish from previous years’ stocking and will continue to provide angling opportunities.
Final inventories on fish stocking will not be conducted until early next year.
