Ben,
what is the historical story behind the browns here?
What ports or areas over the years have tried to stock browns?
Would we be working with browns if we had to use are own hatchery space?
What is the average cost per brown looking at rate of return cost?
Has Portage ever had them stocked up river anywhere?
Did Michigan move there brown stocking north because of issues with browns not really working in the areas they have tried??
Does show how important a net pen could be if possible for EC.
History -
I have records dating back to 1975 for browns for the Lake Michigan Program. They were stocked from 1975 to 1981, and then in 1985. And then from 2002 to present day.
The 1970s stockings were mostly in Lake Michigan proper. In 1978 a few were stocked in Trail Creek somewhere (don't have a descriptor or coordinates handy). In 1981 there were brown trout stocked in the Little Cal (again, I don't have coordinates or a place descriptor).
In 1978, Neil Ledet, the anadramous biologist at the time, surveyed the Little Calumet watershed and discovered naturalized populations of brown trout in some areas. Such as the Heron Rookery and other cool/coldwater tribs. I do not know the origin of those populations, but it was likely from stockings from the WW2 era. I don't have those records, and don't know if any exist, but there are references to stockings of both brown and rainbow trout in LaPorte and Porter County Streams in the 1940s in this document from 1949. Pretty fascinating read
www.nativefishlab.net/library/textpdf/16857.pdf
So, yes - at one time, a long time ago there were some brown trout planted way upstream in the Little Cal watershed. Likely the source of the current wild and naturalized populations found today.
Indiana started stocking brown trout again (in recent history) in 2002. They've been kind of moved all over the place. Originally at Whiting for a couple years, then eventually settled on annual rotation between Trail Creek Marina, Portage (both at the Port and at Portage Public Marina), and Buffington Harbor/East Chicago. Then, in 2016 when the chinook cut happened, Brian and I decided to plant the browns at East Chicago every year. For a couple reasons, first because EC would have nothing planted there in most years, and also because the proximity to Gary Light discharge, and the structure around EC is much better than farther east.
We don't have a calculation of return rate cost like Michigan does, because we don't produce the brown trout ourselves and it costs very little for us to obtain them. But, return rates are generally low. There are not many browns caught in Indiana waters.
I don't want to speak on behalf of Michigan DNR because they obviously know way more about their fishery than I do. But as I understand it, they were seeing poor returns of their brown trout, and decided to concentrate plantings at fewer sites, and move the stockings farther north, due to structure, lack of a spring coho fishery farther north, and maybe some other factors. I believe I've seen some information that Michigan considers browns the most expensive fish to raise in terms of cost per angler return. But, they also don't creel during March, when a lot of those browns are caught. In any case, browns are a highly seasonal fishery on the south and east sides of the lake.
Brown trout returns have gone down lakewide. Even Wisconsin is struggling with declining returns.
If the only options were no browns, or raising browns in Indiana hatcheries, we probably would not raise browns unless there was a significant desire for Indiana to launch a brown trout program. We'd have to cut coho or steelhead to do that. And both have much higher return rates of browns. Not sure how well supported cutting coho/steelhead for browns would be, but I've been surprised before
