Assigning origins in a potentially mixed-stock recreational sea trout (Salmo trutta) fishery

The anadromous, or sea‐going, life history form of brown trout, or sea trout ( Salmo trutta), may lead to potential mixing of populations while foraging at sea. In this article, we assess the potential that multiple populations are using common semi‐enclosed estuaries and quantify the potential levels of straying (i.e. dispersal) of foreign‐produced individuals into populations by using otolith chemical signatures as natural ‘tags’. To do so, we created a database of juvenile fish otolith chemistry (a marker of freshwater production) from four rivers and compared the chemistry of harvested fish in two estuaries important to anglers, the Renews River and Chance Cove Brook, to the database. A discriminant function analysis revealed significant differences in the otolith chemistry of juvenile fish inhabiting the four rivers with a 97% cross‐validated accuracy when classifying individual juveniles to their natal river, indicating our baseline was robust. When assigning adults caught over 3 years (2007–2009) in the recreational fishery in the Renews River estuary, it was determined that over 95% of the fish caught each year originated from Renews River. In contrast, harvested fish in Chance Cove during 2009 were disproportionately comprised of fish produced in Renews River, suggesting the potential for source‐sink population dynamics in Newfoundland. Taken as a whole, these results indicate limited population mixing in nearshore estuaries of this region, but also highlight the potential for some populations to subsidise the harvest by anglers in different areas.