I think this is just a Pennsylvania thing, stocking fish in habitats that can't support them year round. I've never seen the logic to stocking thousands of trout in a body of water that will be like a hot tub in July, but our Fish and Game Commission does it every year. I mostly agree with MikieFinn except that I think they sell a lot of fishing licenses here to people who think it's great to stand shoulder to shoulder with a hundred other people, just on the chance you might catch a 24 inch trout that someone dumped in yesterday. To me that's not really fishing... I'd rather head upstream a couple of miles, fight the brush and the fly-eating trees, to catch a couple of 8 or 9 inch fish instead. But again, that's just me.

When white settlers first came to Pennsylvania, it was all wooded, the streams were full of brook trout. If I had my way, the money used for stocking trout would go into restoring some of our stream areas to their original state. However, I'm sure there are millions of fishing licenses sold every spring to people who'd rather have a wide open space two steps from their car where they can fish for 1 or 2 weeks out of the year.