Private fish stockings may require state notifications in 2024
If you want to buy or stock fish for ponds and rivers next year in Pennsylvania, you may need to file the details with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.
The agency’s Fisheries and Hatcheries Committee held a virtual meeting Jan. 4 to discuss the need to monitor what’s being stocked in Pennsylvania’s waterways.
In 2022, the agency considered requiring authorizations for private stockings. However, after receiving more than 1,000 public comments about the proposal, the agency’s board is rethinking how to accomplish its goal of knowing what's being placed in the state's waterways.
The committee is now looking at having notice of stockings filed by those wanting to stock fish starting in 2024 and building a database of that information. Depending on how the process develops, the agency would be able to start requiring advance authorizations and health protocols two years later.
“Comments and stakeholder input were very, very vital to revising the proposal up to this point so that we could address those concerns and comments that were received but also maintaining the purposes and integrity of the proposed rule making at the same time,” Bob Caccese, director of policy planning, said during the meeting.
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Right now the agency doesn’t have a way to collect data on what types of fish and how many fish are privately stocked in streams and lakes each year.
“It boils down to preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species throughout the commonwealth,” Caccese said.
Second to that is maintaining healthy fisheries and improving their management.
If the agency’s board of commissioners approves the proposal, the public will not need advance permission to have fish placed in the ponds or streams where they already are currently permitted, but they will need to report what type and numbers of fish were stocked.
As the process develops, the agency will implement an authorization requirement to stock fish that could start as early as Jan. 1, 2026.
“It provides stakeholders and those in the aquaculture industry time to prepare for any fish health requirements should they be applicable,” Caccese said.
Committee Chairman Richard Lewis said it’s important they move forward with a protocol system to help prevent the spread of invasive species.
“I’m very happy to see that we’re now focusing on over the next year or longer stocking notifications as opposed to stocking authorization, which has now been pushed back by this revised proposal by at least a few years," he said.
One of the aquaculture companies that voiced concerns over the advance authorization proposal in 2022, is Laurel Hill Trout Farm, a third-generation trout farm on the border of Somerset and Westmoreland counties. Owned by Adam and Liz Pritts, it has three additional Pennsylvania fish farms in Osterburg, Bedford County; Normalville, Fayette County; Newville, Cumberland County and four trout farms in Virginia.
“I’m really happy. I think they have taken into consideration comments and issues that we’ve been bringing up for a while. I’m happy to see our efforts to drum up public comments and have them look at this again have succeeded,” Liz Pritts said.
She likes the progress that is being made in collecting data from everyone who will be involved in the future regulations.
“If you can get all people stocking fish and raising fish on the same page, it’s going to be much easier to prevent problems,” she said.
The Fish and Boat Commission’s next board meeting will be Jan. 23-24.
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Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Stocking fish in Pennsylvania in private streams, ponds
