Outdoors Weekly News Archive

February 22, 2008

Early trout season opens March 1

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DNR News
MADISON - Fish biologists report strong trout populations statewide for the March 1 opening day of the early trout season.
Their forecasts for the early season can be found on the early trout fishing page of the DNR Web site, along with a short webcast featuring Mike Miller, a Department of Natural Resources stream ecologist and avid fly fisherman, offering tips on the best flies and techniques to use in this early season.
The season opens at 5 a.m. and runs through April 27, 2008, and is catch-and-release with only artificial lures with barbless hooks allowed. All trout streams are open in 46 counties, and at least one stream is open in 18 additional counties. Check the Trout Fishing Regulations and Guide for specific waters.
Weather, as always, will play a big role in determining angler success this early season, says Larry Claggett, Department of Natural Resources coldwater specialist. The snow covering much of the state may make it more difficult for anglers to get to trout streams but will help replenish the groundwater the streams depend on.
The heavy snow cover also means anglers will need to pay close attention to how runoff from melting snow is affecting the stream they want to fish.
“If a stream starts to cloud up a little bit, it could be beneficial,” Claggett says. “Debris will start dropping in the water and the fish will be feeding. But if it gets too cloudy, too high, that could shut things down.”
An estimated 165,000 anglers fish for trout, based on license sales, with a smaller proportion fishing the early season, Claggett says. Across both the early season and the regular inland season, trout anglers caught an estimated 1.6 million trout in 2006-07, according to results from a mail survey of anglers during that license year.

Trout populations thrive
MADISON – Hats off to the wily wild trout.
Their instincts, major land use changes and state habitat improvement projects helped them survive the extreme weather of 2007 in good numbers, according to state fisheries biologists. This should result in good prospects for a bumper crop of new fish in spring 2008, according to Dave Vetrano, veteran fish manager for Crawford, La Crosse, Monroe and Vernon counties, who has a number of audio files on the topic available on the early trout fishing pages of the Department of Natural Resources Web site.
Moderate to extreme drought conditions in 2007 left 85 percent of the state with a precipitation deficit of 2 to 4 inches by mid-summer, only to be followed in August by record rains and flooding in parts of southwestern and southeastern Wisconsin.
Sadly, people suffered millions of dollars of flood-related property damage, but the trout and their home streams fared much better.
Wisconsin fish have more cover and more pool habitat as a result of DNR trout habitat work over the past 30 years on more than 750 miles of stream statewide. The work, often done in partnership with local organizations, is paid for by the trout stamps anglers buy to fish for trout on inland waters. It has also stabilized and reshaped stream banks and reconnected them with their floodplains.
Those in-stream improvements have occurred as improvements in farming practices and changing land use – from agriculture to recreational use -- has meant that more rain and melting snow is soaking into the ground and less soil is entering the streams. The ultimate result is more water and colder water to the streams, as described in a February 2002 Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine story.
So with the streams in pretty good shape to handle the floods, the high, fast moving water performed some valuable maintenance work that will benefit older fish, the young ones hatching this winter in the gravel beds of Wisconsin streams, and the anglers that pursue them.