Finsylvannia

this special episode, I interview Fish Commissioner Eric Hussar of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission about the agency’s ballooning hatchery costs and its failure to make cuts recommended by the Penn State Smeal College of Business a decade ago—cuts that could have avoided these issues entirely. We discuss the agency’s transition from the 'Operation Future' era, to the stocking-cut pragmati...

I dropped by the Big Spring in Cumberland County Pennsylvania to film the newly constructed engineered habitat structures for you guys. I walk you through alot of them and talk about some of the research, case studies, and anecdotal examples of the effects of engineered instream structures on native brook trout populations in streams highly invaded by non-native trout. We found some friendly PA fi...

In this episode I talk to Minnesota DNR scientist Nicholas Peterson who specializes in managing Lake Superior Native Coaster Brook Trout. You will learn alot about the amazing life history of coaster brook trout, their resilience, genetics, and many many fisheries management lessons/initiatives we can apply here in Pennsylvania. We may not have Lake Superior in Pennsylvania but we have deep lakes...

In this episode I sit down with fisheries manager and snakehead invasion researcher Dr. Joseph Love of the Maryland DNR. We cover history of the invasion, snakehead biology, documented harms, snakehead misinformation peddled in angling circles, fishing bias towards ignoring harms, and the general lack of understanding out there about how biological invasions work. We talk about the ofd behavior of...

In This episode I interview Dr. Jessica Gorzo, NJDEP weakfish population stock assessment scientist. We talk about the historic cultural significance of these regal sportfish and how they shaped New Jersey shore towns. I talk about my own treasured experiences with weakfish chasing them as a child in capemay in the 1990s and then watching their populations crash and fall off a cliff. Its this cras...

Join me for this Finsylvania Podcast Update! We announce a new big Finsylvania project called “The Finsylvania Road Trip Series” where we hit the road and talk to subject matter experts in management of species outside of PA and take fisheries science & management lessons home back to PA. Meet a new species, a nee fishery, or just learn more about one you already know ir have interest in! I al...

In this episode I sit down with Drew & Tyler from Native Fish For Tomorrow, a Minnesota based native fish conservation organization. I sit down with them to discuss the critical importance that native so called “non-game”(hate that term🥴) fish play in the health and quality of our aquatic ecosystems and fisheries. As fly fishermen we often onow everything about the emergence of the macroinver...

In this episode I interview author Noah Donten. We briefly discuss his new book “Brook by Brook.” This text is a how to guide about chasing PA brook trout that also has some history/conservation information that I am Really enjoying reading right now. However, the main topic of discussion for this epsiode is a chronological history of all the various categories of environmental impairments and ins...

Philip Light of Unicornbrookies.com comes on the podcast to tell all about his most recent article detailing the data dump received from filing a right to know request for Fish and Boats “notice of stocking” data. Private & club stocking in class A streams, mouths of class A streams, and a number of invasive exotics from around the world. We talk about the total lack of regulation of private c...

In this episode I sit down with Kevin Wolfe from the flyboxllc.com and casts that care. We talk about his recent article on the 9 inch harvest minimum for ALL trout in the state of Pennsylvania that was just passed this winter by Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. We discuss the regulation’s effectiveness at its stated intention of “protecting brook trout.” As Kevin and I discuss, you will aee...

In this episode of the Finsylvania podcast I interview Ralph Scherder, the owner and creator of Dark Skies Fly Fishing. We chat about the “wild trout economy” here in Pennsylvania. Specifically, we start with what known economic data exists about PA’s wild trout economy. The we discuss what can be safely inferred about the wild trout economy from Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission surveys about...

In this episode I discuss some breaking news coming out of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat commission, the latest class A stocking exemptions (including Penns Creek), as well as an update about Finsylvania’s stocking reform e-mail campaign to politicians and journalists. People have been coming out of the woodwork asking if they can help get stocking reformed by sending their own personalized e-mai...

In this episode Bill Dell from the troutbitten project and I discuss wild native brook trout and their management here in Pennsylvania. We cover topics like setting expectations for anglers who want to fish for them, their often underestimated resiliency, and how we could be managing them better here in PA. We discuss how states like Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and others are managing native...

In this episode I sit down with Professor of Fluvial Geomorphology Doug Thompson to discuss the overwhelming failure of engineered instream structures to help streams over the past century. In fact, engineered instream structures have harmed and scared many streams in that timeframe by destroying channel complexity, preventing tree growth in the riparian zone, decreasing ground water/spring rechar...

Tim Schaeffer just signaled he is going to grant 13 class A stream stocking exemptions(5 new and 8 renewals) including Penn’s Creek! This was disclosed at the december 23rd hatcheries and fisheries committee meeting 2 days prior to Christmas and WAS NOT listed in the meetings agenda. Further it has been brought to my attention that one pay for play trout club owns property on many of these streams...

This week on Finsylvania Mike Evanko creator of Wooly Bugged and author at Dark Skies Fly Fishing discuss loss of stream access to posting of private land. Many noteable anglers around the state are sounding the alarm on this loss of access that is not getting significantly replaced by Pennsylvania Fish and Boat. We discuss why “angler opportunity” always seems to mean stocked fish and not access...

Show description and links below this weeks action alerts!! Action alert 1: e-mail Governor Josh Shapiro’s office and tell them we need adoption of an emergency stocking authorization in Pennsylvania to mitigate the vast ecological damage from unregulated private stocking. Please also mention we need commissioners taking the 3 vacant spots that will actually use it to say “no” to irresponsible pri...

Finsylvania is a podcast dedicated to discussing and changing how we manage fish in Pennsylvania. In this episode we discuss the elephant in the room, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s failure to manage our states aquatic resources coherently. I lay out a high level overview of the problems with the current myoptic focus on stocking invasive hatchery trout. These issues include wide spre...