I received a reply from Underwater Oz a couple of days ago. I’ve held off forwarding what he wrote because I thought he might login to the forum and respond directly. He has either been to busy or has decided against responding directly.
The following is what he wrote, plus four attachments. In short his view is that wading is damaging. But from my understanding of his material it mostly supports damage to fish eggs from wading through spawning beds during the 3 phases of development: green eggs, to eyed eggs, to yoke fry (fry that have hatched , but are still feeding off the yoke, which gradually is consumed), mortality can also increase due to fungi spreading on to eggs in various stages of development. But not much material supplied about other types of damage to the stream bed due to wading. My view is streams survive flood waters, and can survive wading as long as it isn’t a constant daily stream of people wading the same areas. A small creek runs along the south edge of my lawn, during flooding I’ve seen stones the size of beach balls being shoved down stream.
Two of the attachments are from a study done in Montana 23 years ago. Maybe you can read the uploaded images, I could not unless I opened them in Preview / Adobe.
Ozzie wrote:
[ "Wild brook trout spawn in late fall and their egg laden redds are spread out in streams and river tributaries. From October until the following Feb or March, if the redds are trampled on by anglers and hunters, the eggs are crushed and an entire generation of wild brook trout are gone forever. This also pertains to wild browns. As to wild rainbows, they spawn in the Spring and are subject to the same damage. The redds of wild brookies, whose depressions are hardly noticeable, and very small, can be crushed by only one careless step.
My video, Not Just Trout, which is only in presentation format at this time, in one segment, shows the entire spawning cycle of wild brook trout. I place a heavy focus on this subject to my audience. The two attachments above (note; I was not able to upload these two pictures) are stills from this video.
The attachments show a spawning wild brook trout pair and the redd condition before eggs are deposited, and the redd condition after the completion of spawning. The other two attachments were taken from a magazine; I lost the first page but there is enough information to understand the author’s point.
I disagree with the statement below from Paul Gaskell about damage from wading being minimal. Regulations to the Heritage Section of the Little Lehigh Creek, a beautiful spring creek in Allentown PA, where no wading was ever allowed, were changed in January 1st 2011. Since that time, due to wading, most of the streambed vegetation in this one mile section is now non existent and the hatches are a fraction of what they were before the changes. I may add, the fishing has also been affected. You can probably find blogs on this subject." ]
[Opps. sorry. I can not upload the other two attachments Ozzie sent to me. They are *.emi files, which the forum blocks from being uploaded. They were two pictures of spawning bed, that he calls Redds. One picture was Redd - clean and ready for eggs, The second picture showed the Redd - with eggs covered by gravel and coarse sand ]
Anyway, in my view he makes the case for damage to fish eggs during their 3 stages of development if waded through. And that different species of trout spawn at different times of the year. If you know what species of trout are in the stream, and can recognize the places they are likely to lay their eggs damage to them could be minimized or avoided. Or just don’t wade during that time.
Otherwise his information did not support general stream bed damage from random path wading in the stream at other times. With the possible exception of the damage done to Little Lehigh Creek in Pa. after it was opened to wading. I think more information is needed about what happened there to assess it correctly.
Interesting that the Fish Squish article mentions streams being closed to wading on certain dates. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of wading being restricted between specific dates, but open to wading at other times.
If I recall correctly in one of the Wild Trout Trust videos or on the WTT website it stated fish mortality rates during the first year is 90%, and 40% during second or third years. Due to various causes: from being eaten by stream predators, to simply being washed away by flood waters.
[ if you can not read the Fish Squish article, and would like to. Send me a PM with your email address and I can send them to you. You should be able to read them using Adobe or similar app by zooming the image, The text will be larger but fuzzier] Oh, actually just noticed you can click on the images of the magazine articles and open them in a new tap, from there you can save it, and open it with an application program that allows you to zoom the image, and read it.
I sometimes sleep and also take my kids to school…
