About 1/1/04 I wrote several letters to various people asking to be pointed
at any research available that showed how heavy fishing usage affects the
overall ecology of streams, with specific interest in the invertabrates

I just received another reply, probably the last I'll get, I'd bet and I
promised to post any results .... so here they are

Best I can find out nobody, anywhere, has actually studied how heavy fishing
pressure affects anything but fish numbers. We are left to "assume" that
fish numbers and health are an accurate reflection of the streams overall
health.

If you know of a fisheries student looking for a PHD or Masters project ...
I can suggest one, and one apparently on virgin ground.

I think better of mentioning names ... although everyone that replied made
an effort to be helpful and most asked for me to tell them what I found out
..... I don't have permission to do so. Nearly all the replies suggested I
go to one of the other people I had contacted ... g .... making it feel a
lot like trying to get tech support on one of those damn "if you'd like to
talk to a real person...then **** off" systems G

This line from the note I got today is typical the actual replies to my
question
"Amazingly, we don't have any articles about angler pressure on the fishery,
inverts, or vegetation. It is something to think about, considering the
number of people who fish here. "

For now, if fishing pressure is something that worries the ecologist in you,
I'd say it's likely that fish counts and health DO accurately reflect
overall stream health, and heavy pressure on C&R streams has been shown to
do little damage to fish counts. It does affect the nature of those fish,
imho.

I did find studies that point out the pretty obvious effects heavy human use
has on NON-aquatic residents of streams and they mostly move away and suffer
.... birds, mammals, etc don't like us, at least not in crowds.

MY guess ( guess is as close to science as I get ) is that fishing pressure
will be largely self regulating, over time. When crowds get terrible, the
experience gets terrrible, the fish hide in terror, fishing gets real tough,
and word gets out that "fishin' hole X" ain't what it used to be and crowds
drop off to start the cycle over again. Just my guess, but, a couple of my
responders hinted at the same idea.