Kiss a frog if you like but don’t mess with our trout

This column is about rainbow trout and yellow-legged frogs.

It’s about one of state government’s most important functions: stocking lakes and streams with catchable fish for 2.1 million licensed anglers, plus their kids, who don’t need a license if they’re under 16.

This has nothing to do with Sacramento spending more than it’s taking in. Fishing licenses -- now up to $37 per year -- bring in much more money than the state puts out for fish planting.

This piece is about worry-wart environmentalists fretting about frogs and trying to stop the planting of trout they deem threatening. In their view, native toads are unfairly losing out to cunning nonnative rainbows.

And, truthfully, it’s about writing a column on a holiday and thinking that if I can’t be fishing, at least I can write about fishing. This is a big fishing week. And I suspect there are at least as many people strategizing trout waters as ruminating about politics.

Some should be concerned, especially those who love backpacking into the High Sierra and plucking trout from an alpine lake.

Last fall, two environmental groups -- the Pacific Rivers Council and the Center for Biological Diversity -- sued the state Fish and Game Department, claiming that its trout planting program had failed to assess the adverse impacts on “sensitive aquatic species,” such as the mountain yellow-legged frog, the Yosemite toad and the Santa Ana sucker.

The good-for-nothing Santa Ana sucker?

The suers contended the department had violated the California Environmental Quality Act. The department claimed it was exempt. Not a good answer.

The environmentalists asked the judge -- Patrick Marlette of Sacramento Superior Court -- to shut down trout planting completely. In May, he refused. Good decision. Anglers might have stormed the Capitol with their fishing rods and filleting knives.

But the judge did find the department guilty. He said there was “substantial evidence” that the state’s fish planting program has had “significant environmental impacts on the aquatic ecosystems into which hatchery fish are introduced ... in particular on native species of fish, amphibians and insects.”

He ordered the department to conduct an environmental impact study of its fish stocking. The result is likely to be a halt to some planting, especially in the High Sierra.

OK, I’ve already disclosed my view. I enjoy, as much as anyone, sleeping under the stars beside a mountain lake and hearing the frogs croak, on and on. But I much prefer the sound of a whirring fishing reel as a feisty rainbow makes it run -- and then the sizzle of it frying in bacon grease.

But I called the other side.

Deanna Spooner, conservation director for the Pacific Rivers Council, based in Eugene, Ore., said it’s not just that hatchery-reared rainbows “prey on other fish, on frogs and other amphibians, compete with native species for food and habitat, hybridize with native trout and spread disease. They literally change aquatic systems.

“They tend to be hardier, more adaptable and take over. They have a predator advantage over the native fish. Once they get well established, they’re literally changing the environment around them to their advantage.”

What’s wrong with that, I asked. Isn’t it just Darwinism?

“If all you care about is catching fish,” she answered, “it’s not a problem. But if you care about keeping native species alive and being able to catch fish in their native habitat, it is a problem.”

I admit to caring mostly about catching fish -- to enjoying the sudden tug on my line of a trout of any size, and hearing grandkids squeal as the gleaming critter leaps from the mysterious deep.

Pity the poor future angler who backpacks into some high country lake, where the state previously had been aerial-dropping rainbows, and now finds only a noise-polluting colony of frogs.

John Sullivan, who grew up in the Eastern Sierra and tied fishing flies for extra money as a teen, is skeptical that frogs are victims of trout. “If frogs are such a favorite of trout, why aren’t there any frog lures being sold in Sierra sporting goods stores?” he asks. “Or pollywog lures? Those are for warm water bass.

“And if trout are eating frogs in all those lakes, why aren’t the trout big? The fish are small and hungry.

“The answer is because they eat bugs.”

Sullivan, a Sacramento lobbyist, is a former chief deputy director of the Fish and Game Department.

Moreover, he notes, trout have been planted in Sierra lakes for well over a century. If they’re such frog-eaters, he asks, why have the frogs been declining only recently? Actually, amphibians are in trouble all over the globe.

That brings up another point: It’s a little late to start worrying about the introduction of nonnative species in California. (Actually, the rainbow is a native because it derives from the sea-going steelhead.)

Modern horses and cows aren’t native to California. Neither are most humans.

The Sierra between roughly Mt. Whitney and Lake Tahoe was barren of trout until the 1800s, when mountaineers and prospectors began packing them in with milk cans and canvas bags.

The F&G; Department is planting roughly 5 million pounds of trout this year, 73% of them rainbow. The rest include golden, brook, brown and cutthroat.

The best legislation for fishing in a long time was pushed through two years ago by state Sen. Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto). It required that at least one-third of fishing license revenue be spent on hatcheries and planting.

The frog suit, he asserts, “is just ridiculous. It’s alarmists basically trying to keep people out of the mountains.”

Bob Strickland of San Jose, president of United Anglers of California, used an unprintable word to describe his feeling toward frogs. He added: “We don’t eat frogs. They’re on their own....

“Why all of a sudden does everything have to be native? I don’t care whether it’s a rainbow or a golden or a brookie, as long as it’s something to catch. I release most anyway.”

No pike, however. The state has a huge problem trying to poison big, nonnative northern pike that someone criminally dumped into Lake Davis, which spills into the Sacramento River system. If the evil intruder ever ventured into that system, it could wipe out the California salmon fishery.

It’s a perfect example of how California has bigger fish to fry than worrying about the splendid rainbow.

george.skelton@latimes.com