PA Sportsmen Already Paying The Price

By Bob Frye, Tribune-Review

You walk into your doctor's office with a bullet hole in one leg, stab wounds in your chest, severe burns on your feet and, what the heck, let's throw in a doozy of a hangnail, too.

Clearly, you need care.

And your doctor's response?

He asks if you've been taking your vitamins. He wonders if you've considered getting more exercise. He suggests you fundraise to buy bandages and promises you baby aspirin, maybe, later, if you can convince the neighbors you need them.

That's how Pennsylvania lawmakers treated sportsmen last week.

The executive directors of the Pennsylvania Game and Fish and Boat commissions delivered their annual reports to the members of the House of Representatives game and fisheries committee. As expected, both spent a significant portion of their time asking for money.

Hunting and furtaking license prices haven't changed since 1999; fishing licenses not since 2005.

Increasingly, that's leading to consequences.

The Game Commission has already closed two pheasant farms, something that will mean 50,000 fewer pheasants ­­— at least — for hunters this fall. Next up, said executive director Matt Hough, might be the shuttering of the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area and Howard Nursery, which provides trees and shrubs for game lands.

The Fish and Boat Commission, meanwhile, will have no choice but to make “deep program cuts” starting in 2018 without additional revenue, said executive director John Arway. It's likely some of those will come via hatcheries, he warned.

Both agencies are short on law enforcement officers — the front line against poaching — and may get shorter, the directors said.

That's all on lawmakers.

Only they can increase prices. The fact that they haven't in so long is, as Wes Waldron of the United Bowhunters of Pennsylvania said recently, “at best unconscionable.”

What's the holdup?

Naked self preservation.

Lawmakers didn't display any animus toward the commissions, unlike in times past. But they danced all around the fee issue.

They quizzed the agencies on whether they're cutting costs. They suggested other ways of raising revenue, like selling permits to allow people to use ATVs on game lands. One offered to propose giving each $1 million in general tax money — something that's unprecedented — to tide them over until something, meaning who knows what, changes.

That's all fine as far as it goes. The commissions should be pressured to be efficient and creative.

But none of those ideas will solve their problems or help sportsmen.

Several lawmakers said they understand that and have heard virtually every statewide sportsmen's group say they favor fee hikes.

But they also made clear they won't risk votes back home to do anything about it, not until the commissions can somehow prove an even wider groundswell of support.

Enough's enough.

No one likes paying more for anything. But the time's come.

Sportsmen who value fish and wildlife and the recreation they provide must tell lawmakers to properly our natural resource agencies.

If not, we'll all pay the price in other ways.

Bob Frye is the Tribune-Review outdoors editor. Reach him at 412-216-0193 or bfrye@tribweb.com. See other stories, blogs, videos and more at everybodyadventures.com.

Gill Lice On PA Brookies

By Bob Frye

Gill lice have made an appearance in Pennsylvania.

The parasite – which attaches to the gills of brook trout – was discovered recently in Wolfe Run in Centre County. A subsequent investigation found evidence of them in nine other waters, too.

All had been stocked by the same cooperative nursery, said Brian Wisner, director of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s bureau of hatcheries.

The commission euthanized all of the brookies the nursery had left and replaced them with rainbow trout, which seem resistant to the bugs.

What will become of those streams in the future is harder to say, though, apparently.
Jason Detar, chief of the commission’s division of fisheries management, said there’s been limited research done on gill lice. What is known, he said, is that they’re resistant to chemical treatments and hard to control.

“We’re concerned about this,” he added.

The parasites attach to the gills of individual fish, impacting their ability to process oxygen and causing stress. Some Wisconsin research suggests they show up most often in dry summers in warm water, and can impact survival of young of the year fish, thereby hurting populations, he added.

No one can say what the long-term implications of their presence might mean, though, he added.

Commissioner Bill Sabatose of Elk County said fish with the lice pose no threat to people, however.

“They are safe for human consumption. That’s a fact,” Sabatose said.

Women The Focus Of Recruitment In Fishing Circles

BY BOB FRYE 

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If there's one day a year that's likely to put even the most casual anglers on the water, it's opening day of trout season.

So how many women did you see casting a line Saturday?

Not many, probably, proportionately speaking.

Women have been one of the fastest-growing components of the outdoors — fishing, shooting and hunting — in recent years but still represent a fraction of the people on the water and in the woods.

That seems especially true in Pennsylvania.

A 2011 report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revealed that about 27 percent of anglers nationally are female.

However, Carl Richardson, education section manager for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, said that while women make up 56 percent of Pennsylvania's population, just 6.6 percent of them buy a fishing license in a given year.

Richardson said some survey work determined that three times as many women call themselves anglers as actually buy a license from year to year.

“So we have a big audience that's dropping out,” he said.

The commission wants to address that by year's end.

An internal commission work group of female employees has met twice to figure out how to keep women fishing. Members include women who are avid anglers, as well as those who occasionally fish and some who don't fish at all, Richardson said.

One thing that's clear is women — unlike men — don't necessarily fish to catch fish, Richardson said. They talk about wanting to spend time with family, to be outdoors and relax, he said.

The work group's task is to figure out how to take that information and craft a female-angler recruitment, retention and reactivation plan by this fall. Richardson hopes to present a strategy to commissioners at their September meeting and initiate it in time for 2017 licenses to go on sale Dec. 1.

Commissioners had suggestions for the plan.

Norm Gavlick of Luzerne County runs a combination gun and bait shop and said the key to success is showing customers “added value.” The commission needs to do the same with women who might fish.

“You buy a fishing license, it allows you to fish. But what else do you get?” Gavlick said.

He also suggested the commission do a better job making women, especially single moms, aware they can borrow fishing equipment for a day from commission and many state park offices.

Commissioner Glade Squires of Chester County agreed, suggesting the agency market itself to women by creating learn-to-fish seminars for them.

The potential payoff is huge, commission president Ed Mascharka of Erie County said. He said women account for only about 64,000 of the 800,000 licenses being sold.

“That's nothing compared to the millions of women who are possible license buyers,” he said.

Bob Frye is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at bfrye@tribweb.com or via Twitter@bobfryeoutdoors.

Pennsylvania Fish And Boat Commission Looks To Create Premium Trout Fishing Opportunities

Harry Wade, manager of the Fish and Boat Commission’s
Reynoldsdale hatchery in Bedford County, holds a net full of
trophy brown trout. The commission plans to pack a
bunch of those fish in eight stream sections next year
in an attempt to create premium opportunities for anglers.

By Bob Frye

 

Pine Creek is going on the road.

 

Not the stream itself, of course. But the experience of fishing it.

 

The creek flows through Potter, Tioga and Lycoming counties. It's stocked with trout over more than 50 miles.

There's a 2.8-mile stretch of it, from Slate Run downstream to Bonnell Run, that stands out, though. It's stocked by a group of sportsmen known as the Brown Trout Club. This year, it put in $18,000 worth of trout measuring from 14 to almost 30 inches.

 

Anglers can fish for them year-round, under all tackle, catch and release regulations.

 

The big fish have, by all accounts, proven a draw, bringing in fishermen willing to spend money on tackle, food, gas, lodging and more in return for the chance to catch a monster trout.

 

“This is not a world-class fishery. The trout would have to be wild and naturally reproducing for that,” said Tom Finkbiner, owner of Slate Run Tackle shop and founder of the trout club.

“But it is a world-class fishing experience.”

 

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission wants to recreate that at eight points across the state.

Each year, the agency stocks 33,000 “trophy trout” — brooks, browns and rainbows — ranging in size from 14 to 20 inches in waters across Pennsylvania. They go in at a density of five to 10 fish per stream mile.

 

Starting next spring, the commission plans to stock 3,300 of those fish — 10 percent of the total — in just eight stream sections, each about one to two miles long, at a density of about 250 trout per mile.

 

The intent is to replicate the kind of trophy fishery that's proven so popular on Pine Creek, said Leroy Young, director of the commission's bureau of fisheries. Anglers should have a 25- to 50-times greater chance of landing a big fish on these waters than they would on others elsewhere in the state, he added.

 

“We're excited about this. We want to provide anglers with an opportunity to fish high-density waters for larger trout compared to the typical 11-inch fish,” Young said.

 

“It's quality, not quantity.”

 

The stream sections that will get the fish haven't been determined. Young said the commission wants to pick ones that are open along their entire length to public fishing, meaning those crossing public land may be good candidates. But commissioners won't announce the chosen streams until their Sept. 28-29 meeting in Erie.

Each of the eight commissioner districts will get one trophy water.

 

That would, for example, put one within the Butler, Clarion, Crawford, Erie, Forest, Lawrence, Mercer, Venango and Warren cluster known as District 1; another in the Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Washington and Westmoreland cluster known as District 2; and another in the Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Fulton, Huntingdon, Juniata, Mifflin and Somerset cluster known as District 4.

 

All of the chosen stream sections will be waters currently managed under delayed harvest, artificial lures only regulations, too, Young said. Those rules limit harvest at certain times of year and prohibit the use of bait. They allow for year-round fishing, though.

 

Young hopes that will alleviate concerns about the big fish drawing crowds so large as to be harmful or unpleasant.

“There shouldn't be a sort of opening-day effect. I don't think it will be a circus,” he said.

 

“The point is to give everyone a couple of months to fish for these trout,” said commission president Ed Mascharka of Erie County.

 

The fact that so many big fish will be going into such relatively little water is important, though, said commissioner Bill Sabatose of Elk County.

 

“So you should be able to notice it,” he said.

 

Anglers on other waterways won't be shortchanged, Young said. All of the waters statewide that have been getting trophy fish will continue to get almost as many as ever. They'll just get about one less per mile than previously, he said.

 

“I doubt we could detect that, and I doubt anglers will be able to detect it,” Young said.

 

That's important, said commissioner Rocco Ali of North Apollo. He likes the new program, he said, in part because it will provide a benefit without simultaneously causing harm.

 

“I think it gives delayed harvest anglers, or anglers willing to fish those waters, more opportunity. But I don't think it's going to hurt the general fisherman, which is important to me,” Ali said.

 

The idea of creating “premium” trout waters has been around since 2008, Young said. That it's finally launching next year is fitting, commission executive director John Arway said.

 

Much like how the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources first stocked golden rainbow trout — then called palominos — in 1963, in honor of the state's 100th anniversary, the commission is going to launch its trophy trout program next year, when it's celebrating its 150th anniversary, he said.

 

The potential of the program is what's really exciting, though, he said.

 

“These programs have successfully demonstrated that destination fisheries can be created, drawing anglers from across the state, and even the country, and providing an economic boost to local communities,” Arway said.

 

Young said the commission will evaluate the program as time goes on, measuring angler use and economics, to see if they're doing all that's hoped.

 

So what's it going to be called?

What the Fish and Boat Commission's new trophy program doesn't have yet is a name.

That will be up to fishermen.

Leroy Young, director of the commission's bureau of fisheries, said staff in that section usually name new programs. Almost invariably, no one likes what they come up with, he said.

“So this time we're not going to do it,” Young said.

Instead — in what is also an attempt to build excitement and get angler buy-in — the commission is going to give fishermen the chance to name the program. They may be given options to choose from, like the blue ribbon, lunker or trophy trout program. But they'll also be able to write in their own suggestions, Young said.

Details on how, when and where votes will be accepted will be announced later.

Commissioner Len Lichvar of Boswell has an idea already, though. He and some friends only half-jokingly like the “trophy rat” waters program.

“That's because if you want to throw a mouse pattern or some really big fly or lure after dark, for big fish, these are going to be the places to do it,” Lichvar said.

 

Bob Frye is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at bfrye@tribweb.com or via Twitter @bobfryeoutdoors.

Number Of Co-op Nurseries Climbing In Pennsylvania

By Bob Frye

Last year, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission set a goal of increasing the number of cooperative nurseries around the state. 

 

It has made some progress.

 

Co-ops are hatcheries run by sportsmen. The commission supplies them with fingerlings; sportsmen raise the fish at their own expense and stock them in waters open to public fishing.

 

Most raise trout, though a few that do steelhead and even warmwater species.

 

Last year, 145 organizations ran 160 nurseries around the state, said Brian McHail, the commission's co-op nursery program manager. 

 

Five more have come on since, and three others are close, and preliminary talks are ongoing with five more, he said. Some of the “new” co-ops are additions to existing facilities, but others are totally new. The commission is glad to get both, commissioner Ed Mascharka of Erie County said. 

 

“To me, even adding a new raceway that holds 500 more fish, that's a new co-op. That's 500 fish that we didn't have,” he said. 

 

Mascharka added while the commission continues to seek out new partners, it also needs to figure out how to restore its co-op grant program — which provides money to volunteers raising fish — to full funding. It once offered $60,000 in grants a year, but has been cut to $30,000.

 

Bob Frye is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at bfrye@tribweb.com or via Twitter @bobfryeoutdoors.

PA Anglers, Commissioners Debate Stocking Over Native Trout, Protecting Clean Waters From Industrial Impacts

The presence of wild trout generally indicates clean water.
This wild brown trout was released on Yellow Creek,
Bedford County, which is currently being considered for a
Class A Wild Trout designation

By Ben Moyer / Special to the Post-Gazette

The Fish and Boat Commission's intent to act on two related items at its meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Harrisburg has alarmed, disappointed and confused anglers on opposing sides of the issues. But a less apparent fact could trump that unease in the end.

Among a slate of other fisheries-related matters, the commission's 10-member board will vote on a proposal to designate 10 stream sections as Class A Wild Trout waters, removing them from the trout-stocking schedule and adding them to an existing list of about 600 Class A streams around the state that have wild trout populations.

None of the 10 streams under consideration flow in southwestern Pennsylvania. Streams pending for the Class A rating are parts of Fishing Creek (Clinton County), Yellow Creek (two sections in Bedford County), Little Lehigh Creek (two sections in Lehigh County), Monocacy Creek (two sections in Northampton County), Martins Creek (Northampton), Penns Creek (Centre) and Pohopoco Creek (Carbon).

Some trout anglers were initially dismayed, while others were elated, at the prospect of those Class A designations. An established PFBC policy has been to ban the stocking of hatchery-bred trout on Class A waters, relying on naturally reproducing trout to provide angling recreation. All of the 10 stream sections in question had been stocked by the PFBC, some as recently as 2014.

But PFBC surveys confirmed the streams also supported wild populations. When the agency began considering the change last year, many anglers felt that ending the stocking would hurt the quality of fishing there.

"The Little Lehigh and Monocacy are heavily fished creeks. My customers fish there and were not happy when they heard [the Fish and Boat Commission] might stop stocking," said Willie Marx, owner of Willie Marx's Bait and Tackle just outside Allentown, Lehigh County. "How many of these guys are going to fish around here if they designate for wild trout only? They should keep stocking, for one thing because a lot of kids fish there and you've got to keep kids interested."

Some of Marx's customers took up a pen or struck a keyboard and confirmed his observations. When PFBC sought public comments on its Class A no-stocking policy before its September 2014 meeting at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Farmington, Fayette County, the agency got 95 letters and emails opposing any reduction in stocking the streams being considered for Class A designation -- more than four times the number of responses supporting the standing Class A no-stocking policy.

As a result, in September, the PFBC board considered allowing stocking on Class A streams if certain considerations were met. Those include high angler use, the absence of wild brook trout and streams to be stocked were not on the agency's original list of Class A waters. The board eventually discarded all of those criteria and voted to amend its policy to say that Class A streams would not be stocked except, "with rare exceptions," provided that the sitting commissioners consented to the stocking. That consent could come later this week after the decision to add the 10 streams to the Class A list.

The policy change to allow Class A stocking in "rare" instances pleased Marx and his customers in the Lehigh Valley, at least temporarily. But it disappointed other anglers who maintain that artificial stocking degrades existing wild trout populations.

"Although our organization liked the Class A designation concept, we did not like the idea of stocking Class A. But we did not oppose it, provided the criteria initially considered were in place," said Ken Undercoffer of Clearfield and cochair of the Trout Management Committee for the Pennsylvania State Council of Trout Unlimited. "Then [PFBC] started backing up and changing the rules. Apparently rules and past policy mean nothing.

"Hatchery trout can be a valuable recreational resource when used intelligently, but it makes no sense to take those expensive fish and plant them in streams perfectly capable of supporting fine trout fisheries on their own. Montana figured that out 40 years ago."

Undercoffer's reference was to a decision made in 1974 by the Montana Fish, Parks and Wildlife agency to cease nearly all stocking of trout streams. Montana continues to stock lakes and some urban waters but allows its internationally famed trout streams to develop their own wild fisheries.

"Wild trout numbers increased, just as our studies said they would," said Dick Vincent, the fisheries biologist who advocated Montana's no-stocking policy, as quoted in an interview published in Montana Outdoors magazine. "I think the biggest [impact] was that people began to see wild trout as a valuable, limited resource, and that the state needs to protect habitat to conserve that resource."

Vincent's observation may manifest one aspect of these administrative shifts that all anglers, regardless of their views on stocked versus wild trout, can agree on.
But there's another consideration.

Streams recognized as Class A Wild Trout waters qualify automatically as High Quality waters under state Department of Environmental Protection regulations. Developers and resource extraction activities must comply with stricter regulations to gain DEP permits and continue operating within High Quality watersheds.

At least three of the 10 streams PFBC is considering for Class A designation lie outside the perimeter of the Marcellus Shale formation in central and northern Pennsylvania, a fact that may have made PFBC willing to absorb the criticism it attracted in the no-stocking turmoil that accompanied the proposed Class A designations.

"Since the inception of shale gas development, we've seen activity with the potential to impact wild trout resources in remote areas and on a scale we'd never seen before," said John Arway, Fish and Boat Commission executive director. "The Marcellus industry has advocated that we assess trout streams where they might operate and know what's there so they can design their activities around what we need to protect."

Arway said his agency had always been more than willing to undertake those trout searches, but that it would take 125 years for agency staff alone to examine all the state's stream miles.

"So we got creative, and with funding from the Mellon Foundation and manpower from colleges and universities around the state we launched our Unassessed Waters Initiative," Arway said.

Cooperating university teams have documented wild trout populations in numerous stream sections where they had not been known to exist.

"Because of the regulatory implications of Class A, whenever our partners find a qualifying Class A wild trout population, our own biologists go back out and confirm," Arway said. "It provides an extra level of science for these decisions and the regulatory requirements that follow."

A spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition was unavailable for comment, but the group has previously stated its approval of the Unassessed Waters Initiative.

"There are actually two parts to this whole situation, and [PFBC commissioners] hope that anglers will see that," said Len Lichvar, Fish and Boat commissioner representing Region 2 in Southcentral Pennsylvania. "The first is whether or not to designate Class A. The next issue is how to manage those streams as recreational fisheries. We may have different opinions on the stocking issue, but our data shows these 10 streams and many others deserve the additional level of protection brought with Class A."

Lichvar also said his understanding was that the upcoming vote on whether to stock applied only to the 10 streams proposed for Class A designation, and that the original 600 waters would not receive hatchery trout.

"But that's something that any future board could change at any time," he said

Trout Stocking Could See Big Changes In Pennsylvania

By Bob Frye, Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Patrick Robinson, president of the Sandy Bottom
Sportsman's Club in Seward, holds prize-winning
tag numbers 3743 and 3744 that were placed on two
of the several hundred brown and rainbow trout stocked
by the club in the nearby Conemaugh River
Wednesday morning. Each tagged fish is worth
$50 to a lucky fisherman.

Dwight Yingling is a happy man these days.

Owner of North Park Sports Shop in Allison Park, he's seen his business take off over the last two-plus years, ever since North Park Lake was dredged and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission once again began stocking it with trout. Last year was his most profitable ever.

That's not all about fish. Yingling runs a booming bike rental and repair business out of the shop, too, so a share of his customers are more likely to be wearing bicycle shorts than fishing vests.

But there's no denying the power of stocked trout either.

“Oh yeah, that's a big deal. Trout are a huge thing around here,” Yingling said. “The bass fishing in the lake is pretty good and is only going to get better. But bass fishing, that's something that just kind of goes on all summer long. There are never a lot of guys standing in line to fish for bass like there is for trout. Those trout produce a lot of business.”

He's expecting big things again this year, when trout season opens at 8 a.m. Saturday. An estimated 600,000 fishermen are expected on the water.

None of that is necessarily new.

The Fish and Boat Commission has been stocking trout for more than a century, with its oldest hatcheries dating to at least 1874, a time when fish were delivered to streams in milk cans aboard horse-drawn buggies and later trains. The commission even had its own railroad car, the Susquehanna, for almost two decades, using it to carry fish around the state and to a couple of World's Fairs.

The Susquehanna has passed into history, but the state still ranks in the top 10, if not the top five, nationally in how many trout it produces, stocking 3.2 million adult-sized fish each year, along with several million “fingerlings,” said southern hatcheries manager Tom Cochran.

But tough times lie ahead, the kind that might require a change in how the state funds fish and wildlife management.

The model

Traditionally, fish and wildlife across America has been supported on the sportsmen's dollar. Under the “North American Model” of conservation, fish and wildlife belong to all of the people. Yet state fish and wildlife agencies get 80 percent or more of their funding through sales of licenses purchased by hunters, trappers and anglers, and through federal excise taxes paid on sporting equipment like firearms, fishing rods and the like, said Ron Regan, executive director of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

It's a system that's worked remarkably well, he said.

Once decimated populations of species like white-tailed deer, brook trout and turkeys have been restored, land and habitat has been conserved and revitalized, and the entire public has benefitted, he said.

“It's been a hugely successful model, the greatest story never told,” Regan said.

But it's also facing challenges. The number of hunters and anglers has declined over time, just as fish and wildlife agencies have been increasingly tasked with managing “non-game” species, including everything from salamanders to peregrine falcons. Add in costs associated with health care, infrastructure like hatcheries more than a century old and more, and budgets have been stretched thin, Regan said.

“The system does still work,” he said. “But the reality is, if you've got fewer hunters or fewer anglers and fewer licenses being bought and less money coming in, hard choices will have to be made.”

Cutbacks possible

The Fish and Boat Commission has its troubles.

The agency needs to come up with $9.2 million by 2016, and every year thereafter, to account for rising costs, most of them state-mandated pension contributions it did not negotiate but must live with, said executive director John Arway.

To address that looming shortfall, the agency's board last January announced plans to close two trout hatcheries, one at Oswayo in Potter County and Bellefonte in Centre County. That would save $2 million annually, but at a cost of 750,000 trout – about 22 percent of the total stocked each year -- starting in 2015.

It's since backtracked but only partly. Under intense political pressure, the board agreed to delay the closures until July 2016 while it looked for more money.

If none is found, a reduction in stocking of that magnitude would be a huge hit in a state where trout are king.

Figures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated recreation show that trout account for more than 4.5 millions days of fishing in Pennsylvania each year. No other species comes close to generating that much activity.

“I strongly believe the mission of the commission is to provide opportunities to anglers. To close those two hatcheries would be devastating,” state Rep. Martin Causer of Potter County, chairman of the House game and fisheries committee, said at a recent hearing at the Capital.

Rep. Marc Gergely of White Oak agreed, saying requests for the commission's trout stocking list are among the most common he receives in his office annually.

“We're a trout state. We want put-and-take trout fisheries,” he said.

Providing them costs money, though, and the commission needs help finding it, said executive director John Arway.

“I'm hopeful the legislature realizes that, if we're going to continue to stock 3.2 million trout and sustain the programs the public expects, they're going to have to come up with some additional funding,” Arway said.

License fees vs. sales tax

In decades past, whenever the commission needed money, lawmakers raised fishing license fees. They offered to do the same thing again more than a year ago.

The commission wants no parts of it.

The problem, Arway said, is that whenever license fees go up, some fishermen quit the sport. Some come back in time, but not all do. The result is a short-term bump in revenue that's more than offset by a long-term decline in customers.

Something else is needed, he said. He's been pushing two ideas: a new tax on water use paid by corporations, which the commission would get a share of, and a plan to re-allocate a portion of existing state sales taxes to conservation.

The former idea is unheard of in the Northeast, and has run into political opposition. The latter idea has worked in other places, though.

Since 1976 the state of Missouri has allocated one-eighth of 1 percent of all state sales taxes collected to its Department of Conservation. That's just eight cents of every $10 in taxes collected, but it's been a windfall for conservation, said department spokesman Joe Jarek.

In fiscal year 2012-13, for example, the department earned about $32 million through hunting, fishing and trapping license sales. But it got $102.5 million in sales tax revenues. That's by far the department's largest source of income, Jarek said.

“What's nice is, it's without sunset. It's just ongoing. We don't have to go back before the legislature every five, seven, 10 years to ask for more money in the form of license increases,” Jarek said. “We can essentially use it anywhere conservation related.”

Arkansas has something similar. Since 1997 it's devoted one-eighth of 1 percent of its sales tax revenue to conservation, split several ways. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission gets 45 percent of the money, as does Arkansas State Parks. The Department of Arkansas Heritage, a history agency, gets 9 percent, while Keep Arkansas Beautiful gets 1 percent.

The Fish and Game Commission's share amounts to a much-needed $25 million annually.

“It's been a godsend,” said spokesman Keith Stephens. “We were to the point where we couldn't grow. We couldn't do some of the things the public was asking us to do. We just didn't have the resources.”

A side benefit of the program, in addition to providing additional revenue, is that it lets all state residents -- sportsmen or not – have a say in fish and wildlife.

“You don't have to be a bass fisherman, for example, to be involved with conservation in Arkansas,” Stephens said.

In Virginia, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries gets one-half of 1 percent of sales tax collected on specific items, like tents and binoculars. That brings in as much as $7 million annually, said spokesman Lee Walker.

The money is earmarked for spending on non-game species such as songbirds. That frees up license revenues to take care of the species hunters and anglers generally care most about, while – as in Arkansas – tapping into a “non-typical customer base,” Walker said.

Double-edge sword

Taking tax money from the general public like that worries some people, though.

Traditionally, fish and wildlife agencies – charged with managing all species for all of the people -- have been seen as catering to sportsmen above all others because they were buying the licenses and paying the bills. Across the country, there's always been a level of fear in the sporting community that that might cease to be the case if money comes in from other sources, Regan said.

Things are no different in Pennsylvania.

“In our minds, we think that you could justify some level of general fund support for the Game and Fish and Boat commissions, without any accompanying additional legislative oversight,” said Lowell Graybill of Elizabethtown, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs. “But we know very well that when you open up that can of worms, it's anybody's guess how things will quite end up.

“It's a conundrum. It's a concept that really raises some concerns.”

Causer did nothing to ease those fears when Arway pitched the idea of sharing sales tax money at a meeting of the House game and fisheries committee.

“The more you receive general fund revenues, the more it's going to change the agency,” Causer said. “Be careful what you wish for. There may be some oversight that comes with that.”

The future

In Missouri and Arkansas, voters directly decided to share tax revenues with their wildlife agencies via referendum. That can't happen here.

Pennsylvania has no statewide referendum procedure, said Department of State spokesman Ron Ruman. A change in how taxes are allocated would have to come through the legislature.

Gergely said he's going to try and foster those discussions and get a percentage of existing sales taxes directed back to the Game and Fish and Boat commissions. That's only fair, he said. Statistics from the Fish and Wildlife Service show that hunting and fishing generate billions in economic activity across the Commonwealth, benefitting everyone from gas station and restaurant owners to hotels and sporting goods stores.

“We have to start talking about redirecting a few of those dollars to support the agencies that do the work,” Gergely said. “We have to get that message out.”

Arway said he hopes the effort succeeds. Stocked trout provide all kinds of benefits, offering recreation and supporting economies and promoting mental health, he said. But they're expensive to raise and distribute, too.

“We've created a certain expectation among our anglers over a long period of time. And I fully support that (stocking) program,” Arway said. “But you've got to make decisions about what you can and can't afford.”

Bob Frye is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at bfrye@tribweb.com or via Twitter @bobfryeoutdoors.

Big business locally

How big is trout fishing in Pennsylvania?

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission sold just more than 859,000 licenses in 2013. About 70 percent of those people also bought a trout stamp or a combination Lake Erie/trout stamp, either of which is required to fish in waters stocked with trout.

Western Pennsylvania supplies a lot of those trout fishermen.

Allegheny County alone accounted for 54,489 fishing licenses sold in 2013; no other county sold more than 32,000. Westmoreland County accounted for 23,845 fishing licenses sold, Cambria 17,671, Butler 16,166, Fayette 13,986, Beaver 10,229, Washington 9,060, Indiana 9,022, Armstrong 8,685, and Somerset 8,239.

Allegheny also led the way statewide with 35,987 trout stamps and Lake Erie/trout stamp combos in 2013.