Dan Tredinnick Quotations

Mussels may be invisible to most folks, including anglers. But if you don't protect them they're gone, and with them a critical link in the whole chain of natural resources.

Given the landowner situation in Erie, property rights isn't a fight we're going to pick, at least for now. It would have a positive benefit once you're on the water, but it wouldn't get you to the water.

We don't have anything up our sleeve ready to go. There's a lot to flesh out. But we want to at least start the discussion.

We didn't want to create another opening-day effect, especially for private landowners who might have been tempted to consider posting their ground if they were constantly bombarded with anglers.

We'd like to have ownership of the canyon and feel we are in the best position to manage it.

Different properties have been brought to our attention, although it's a limited universe as to what's along a stream. At this point, we honestly don't know what, say, half a mile of public access would cost us.

The same features that make them easy to maneuver also make them unstable. They don't draught a lot of water. They just skim the surface. That makes them tippy and more dangerous.

Raising trout in the numbers that we do to the size we do is an extremely expensive proposition. We have an obligation to get the best return on that investment that we can.

People focus too much on numbers. Given how much trout waters vary in size and access, numbers alone don't reflect fishing opportunities.

People plan their marriages around it. The calls start coming in around the first of the year from people wanting to make plans. I've had brides-to-be tell me that that's why they're asking, because they don't want to plan their wedding the same weekend as the opener. And that's not something that's just happened once. It happens often enough every year that it sticks with you.

I usually tell people 'low and slow,' meaning to add weight to their lines so they stay low in the streams and move more slowly in swift waters. That's my advice for how they're going to catch fish in high-moving waters. This year, low and slow definitely describes the streams.

You're looking at 50 plus years of having a single, statewide opening day in mid-April. That means just about everyone who is out there trout fishing now has never known anything else.

The average stocked trout goes to about a half pound in Pennsylvania. You really don't need a heavy line in the first place. When you see low, slow waters the fish are line shy. When it's high and cloudy, there's not as much of an issue.

Everyone agrees that the spillway was heavily damaged, but that's where we part ways. The problem is you can't replace the spillway and have a functional dam again. The dam does not meet the requirements for a possible maximum flood. The entire dam needs to be replaced.

Any time you introduce a new species into an ecosystem, there will be disruption, but we don't know what that disruption will be.

It's impossible to say whether a life jacket would have made a difference for Mr. Seidel, but certainly it would have helped. Had this individual had a life jacket on, he certainly would have improved his odds.

If you think about it, the guys at the hatchery aren't going to stand there and count 1,000 trout when they load them.

The bottom line is, any stream or lake we are stocking is going to provide a quality fishing experience, and the number is not the judge of that. If people are so focused on the numbers, they are missing out on some really good fishing opportunities right in their own backyards.

These fish cost a lot. So, we're trying to make sure we get the most bang for the buck. A fish that dies or gets eaten by a heron isn't a good use of our money.

It's not the first time something like this has happened. There's something about big fish that makes people throw out rhyme or reason. They get so excited, they lose sight of reality.

It's not a particularly large program in terms of the number of waters or the number of trout stocked, but it's generally been pretty well received. Particularly in instances like this winter, where you've got a lot of open water, if the conditions are right, it's great because people can fish knowing there are fresh trout out there.

It's still something we feel, as a staff, is viable. That's especially so if the money it raises gets plowed right back into supporting youth programs that get kids fishing.

It's a safe bet to say with special regulations, it's more about managing people than managing fish. It's often more social than biological, putting streams into a Catch and Release or any other program.

It was a very nice fish. Whether it was an actual state record we'll never know because as soon as we realized it wasn't caught from an approved trout water in season, we stopped the verification process although we did have some doubts about the size.

We kind of said, 'We need this whole area to be off limits,' but we didn't have the data to be site specific. Although we're not the permitting agency -- we're advisers -- if we're going to advise, we need good data.