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.