Share your thoughts on trout regulations
The Fisheries Division of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is requesting your input for its latest five question survey. The purpose of this short survey is to get preference for several items related to trout season. Some context is provided below.
This survey will close on Monday, April 5, 2021.
The link to the five question survey is https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=-nyLEd2juUiwJjH_abtzi-ZjjYpHr3JChLaJFaldF3ZUQ0cxVU1USzg5QVFWUEtWRktZVjUxSVJUTS4u.
The Fisheries Division recently published the Statewide Salmonid Action Plan, a plan dedicated to improving trout fishing in Connecticut. Considerations in the plan include whether to continue the historical practice of closing the fishing season on waterbodies stocked with trout; and, if the closed season were to be eliminated, determining how those fisheries should be managed. For reference, the current statewide regulations specify a 5 trout per person per day creel limit during the open season, with fishing closed on waterbodies stocked with trout from March 1st until the 2nd Saturday in April. With that backdrop, we’d like to gauge your support for following potential regulatory changes:
1.) Eliminating the closed season (NOTE: the legislature is currently considering a proposal to do just that).
2.) If the closed season is eliminated, replacing it with catch and release fishing throughout the traditional closed season or allowing harvest during the traditional closed season.
3.) Reducing the creel limit.
The five survey questions will offer a variety of options related to the above considerations. If you have other thoughts about how to manage these fisheries should the traditional closed season be eliminated, please share them directly with me via my email.