This "thread" should bring out even more bowls of popcorn....

[WarrenP]

In a couple threads here lately, there have been those who stated they would bring out the bowls of popcorn to watch the reactions of some members to a question asked and I thought this would be a good time to present other questions so that those eating their popcorn could continue to be entertained:

There are two groups of fly fishermen here and one group feels a stocked trout will always remain a stocked trout with lesser intelligents and the other group feels the only "true" trout is a wild trout and I struggle with the "mind-set" that a stocked trout will never be a true trout. One is raised in a hatchery and one is raised in the river and they are both trout with different birthing locations. To say they are not both trout would be like saying a human created naturally is different than a human created artificially which makes no sense. You would not be able to tell one from the other if they are side by side. To say a wild trout is harder to catch than a freshly stocked trout would be true, but, after that stocked trout has been in the river system for awhile, it becomes harder to fool. Last year, during the government shut-down, the local hatchery here had several hundred 3 inch browns they were raising and they feared their budget would be cut and they would not have enough trout food to raise these 3 inch browns to stocking length, so, rather than have them die and go to waste, they stocked them in the river here thinking that some would make it and some would provide good forage for the larger browns. In my mind, a 3 inch brown that does survive predatation would be as close to being "wild" as one could get, but, in some fly fisherman's minds it is not "wild" but a "stocker" and I guess I am not smart enough to figure that out. Another fly fisherman and I "found" these 3 inch fish by accident one day and I took pictures of them and sent to the TWRA with the question of the possibility of spawned trout in the river and they responded with the reason 3 inch fish were put in the system. That was last year and I have since been back to that location on the river and have caught some browns that were 7 inches long and I feel they were the 3 inch fish that survived. So, with that thought out there, would I be correct to say that those who say a "stocked" trout is not a "wild" trout are only referring to the "birthing" part and that both can be considered trout? If that is true, could we just drop the "stocked" and "wild" part and say they are both just trout? If it were not for trout being raised and put into our rivers, we would not have any trout in a lot of our river systems due to what we humans have done to our water quality. I feel some fly fishermen feel that they are not true fly fishermen because someone keeps brow beating them that they are only catching "stocked" trout and that they would not be a good enough fly fishermen to catch the real "wild" trout and that is not fair and that is what causes friction between fly fishermen.

Now, pass me a bowl of popcorn and let the show begin........ For you new members, the above will raise some hackles and I only bring it up because it is what I feel and believe. Just keep eating the popcorn and enjoy the show and when it is over, things will settle down.

I agree that a freshly stocked trout will be easier to catch in the first month or so of stocking but after that they will act more like a trout that was raised in the river and, therefore, both are trout and drop the "stocked" and "wild" description.

[sagefisher]

Warren,

I don't disagree.

I do Catch and Release on all fish, wild or stocked, but that is my personal choice. I have no qualms about people taking stocked fish from a lake or any body of water where stockers are released as they will always be replenished every year or several times a year. On rivers or lakes where there is no stocking program and the only fish are wild fish, then I really stress C&R. It doesn't take long to wipe out a body of water. Over fishing can have a really kill a good fishery. There are exceptions. Brookies tend to deliberately over populate as that is how they make sure they continue to exist. But, too many fish and they get very stunted and need to be thinned out. Crappie and Bluegills can tend to do the same thing and need to be thinned.

But back to your point, that after a while the stocked fish become the same as wild fish. Yep, once they have gotten off the brown pill diet and reverted to their natural food sources, they will turn into wilds. They may not have the same genetics as the 'true wilds' but they are very close and the law of the jungle takes over and only the strong or smart survive.

You sprinkling any cheese powder over your popcorn?

Larry ---sagefisher---

[Uncle Jesse]

Warren, I have the privilege of regularly fishing a stream that Is regularly stocked with rainbow trout but not browns. But I probably catch as many browns, and all the really small fish I catch are browns, as rainbow. It was discover several years ago the brown trout were reproducing in the tailwater of the Hooch. The first 3, maybe 4 months a fly looking like a food pellet might bring back memory imprinted as a youth, but I don't think the long term memory of a trout is that good. The DNR has confirmed some real hawg browns that make good brood stock and an angler using a spinning rod caught a 12 lb. brown about 3 years ago.

[Betty Hiner]

Well ... ya-ahh!

*light salt, light butter, thank you!*

[oldster]

Warren, I agree with you mostly. (Had to quallify that a little) Stocked trout do become more like stream borns if they can survive that long. A difference is the stocked fish are normally hatched from eggs from parents that are
descended from generations of stocked fish and may have lost some of their survival skills. That said, and in opposition to some experts who contend that trout memorys are measured in seconds, I think that their memory is better than that and that stockers do learn. Stockers in delayed harvest streams who get jerked out by the lip a number of times do get harder to catch. Pass the popcorn!

[WarrenP]

Larry,

Yes, I do sprinkle cheese powder on my popcorn!

I guess what brought this to my mind is that I toured the hatchery and discovered that the trout being raised here were brought in as eggs from a river in the State of Washington. Those "eggs" were then raised to stocking lengths. Another question that comes to my mind is that if there is a "difference" between "stocked" and "wild" trout, what would you call the spawned fish that came from a "stocker" that survived and spawned? See what happens when I am resting my rotator cuff surgery rather than fishing and they are predicting rain for today?

[CharlaineC]

Warren I really have to say that I love you take on this classic argument. I myself have always thought "wild vs stocker" only as there birthplace. The fact that the fish are stocked does not remove the engrained natural instincts that make them wild. Now if a stocked fish acted in a different way then a wild fish in a natural instinct. For example the males waiting in one location to be milked of sperm to fertilize eggs. I could then say that the stocked fish was different, but this does not happen nor say it ever will. So in reality a stocked fish is no longer a stocked fish after it is fending for itself and following its natural instincts. The term stocked could also be implied to any fish that has been artificially introduced to a location not normally found to have this type of fish. One might consider a stock fich to be the standard fish in a location. Thus not even referring to its place of birth.
This leads me to wonder why does it matter.

[Allan]

Let me just say that when I bring a trout to net, so to speak, I don't ask for its ID. I simply say "thank you" and release.
In a video, Lee Wulff call the trout in the Beaverkill, 'the most sophisticated' because of all the flies (and possibly the number of times they've been released) they've seen and how hard they've been fished over'. Now the fish jhe's talking about, for the most part, are stocked trout.
Regardless, have at it if you're that strongly opinionated on this subject. I'll take my popcorn buttered and with some salt.

Allan

[WarrenP]

As long as everyone here understands that I did not bring this up to create problems or to be opinionated on the subject. I just get a little disturbed, and some, who know me, will tell you that I am disturbed, when someone replies to the poster to remember they are fishing over "stockers" as if it would be any different if they were fishing over "wild" trout.

When I am fly fishing, I do a lot of exploring and thinking and that is why I posted this and I have other questions for those who are opinionated that the "wild" fish they are catching are superior to fish that were raised in a hatchery. Lets face it, most of our rivers have both "stocked" and "wild" trout in them and since there is no difference in the looks of either, how do they know that the fish they just released was "wild"?

How do we know that the trout we are catching are 100% wild? Could they not be a mixture of both and if they are, are they considered "wild" or "stocked"? I feel the fish I am catching in my local rivers here are stockers because they have not proved that there is any reproduction going on YET. There have been some 10 pound and larger trout caught by spinner fishermen from my local "stocked" river and those have been in the river system a long time. A lot of local fly fishermen were shocked a year or so ago when the cicadas were thick, on how many large trout there were in our river and they were caught using cicada flies. After the cicada hatch was over, no reports of the larger trout being caught came up again. In my mind, if we have these larger trout present in this river, eventually, they should find a way to reproduce and will.

As far as trout memory goes, I have caught trout from one pool on my local river while fishing upstream and when I returned back down the river, caught them again on the same fly! I guess one could say that has nothing to do with memory and that the fish was a "dumb" stocker!

Folks, do not get upset with my wonderings and questions. I do not bring them up to raise "hackles". I feel if everyone would give some thoughts to what I have posted, maybe, they could understand why I feel there is not a whole lot of difference between "stream raised" and "hatchery raised" trout, after a time, when you think about it.

Now off for some more popcorn.......

To me, I really do not care which trout I catch as long as I am fooling them and having a great time on the river.

[Silver Creek]

I'm going to step into it here.

A hatchery raised trout from parents have come from generations of hatchery raised trout are NOT the same as trout from wild parents. That is the very basis of the argument that hatcheries cannot replace wild salmon fisheries that have been and are threatened by dams on the Columbia River in Washington.

Hatchery raised fish provide recreational fishing but these fish are not the same as fish from wild stock that survived for eons in the wild. Science does not support the contention that hatchery raised fish from hatchery raised parents are the same as wild trout raised from wild parents.

http://www.dailyevergreen.com/news/a...7a43b2370.html

1. Research has shown that trout that are raised in hatcheries from wild parents and then planted into rivers have a higher survival rate than the trout raised in hatcheries from hatchery trout parents.

Wisconsin has a wild trout program that has demonstrated this fact.

http://www.littlejuniata.org/article.php?id=37


2. Stocking hatchery that then crossbreed with wild trout can weaken the wild trout genome and lead to less viable crossbreed of trout than the purebred wild fish.

"Abstract:

We have documented an early life survival advantage by naturalized populations of anad- romous rainbow trout Oncorhynchus my kiss over a more recently introduced hatchery population and outbreeding depression resulting from interbreeding between the two strains. .... Having an entire naturalized genome, not just a naturalized mother, was important for survival over the first winter. Naturalized offspring outperformed all others in survival to age 1+ and hybrids had reduced, but intermediate, survival relative to the two pure crosses. ..... Continued stocking of the hatchery fish may conflict with a management goal of sustaining the naturalized populations."

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ark/images/stories/miller.pdf


3. Because of the weakening of crossbreeding of wild fish with stocked fish, since 2001 the state of Idaho has only stocked sterile fish into watersheds with populations of wild fish. They then studied whether the competition of these fish affected native populations of trout. They did not because they has a high mortality rate.

"The lack of population-level effects from stocking catchables was not surprising considering the high short-term mortality and the socially and physiologically naive behavior typically exhibited by hatchery catchables stocked in logic systems."

http://www.cfr.msstate.edu/students/...chable rbt.pdf


4. Hatchery trout are slower than wild trout. A logical conclusion would be that a hatchery raised trout on the end of the line can not fight as effectively as a wild trout of similar size.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWSivb-H0k0


http://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrop...or-wild-trout/


http://www.cbbulletin.com/405117.aspx


5. The late Robert Behnke, our leading trout researcher has written about the innate differences of wild and hatchery trout.

http://books.google.com/books?id=GL0...rvival&f=false

There is abundant research that demonstrates a hatchery fish is inferior to wild fish. A hatchery fish that survives and "acts" like a wild fish is a rare breed and is the best of the best of a hatchery fish populations. But it is still inferior to a wild fish in its genetic code; and in fact, studies I have cited show that it passes this inferiority on to its progeny.