I like to fish. Stockers, wild, or even creek chubs. I just like to fish. Now then, I'm not sure that one is better or woes or harder to catch than another. However, on my home warts I can catch fish pretty much anytime. So I propose another theory on this subject, is it a difference in the fish? Or the angler?
Now, would someone please pass the popcorn?
hNt
"If we lie to the government, it's called a felony, when they lie to us, it's called politics." Bill Murray
If stockers survive and get to eating like a stream or lake fish they IMO become a native fish. They survived they deserve to be called a native.
Butter and Sea Salt for me leave the cheese powder off!!!
It changes the fishs' genetic structuring to be brought into the hatchery? How does that happen?
Trouts don't live in ugly places.
A friend is not who knows you the longest, but the one who came and never left your side.
Don't look back, we ain't goin' that way.
To Everyone
I am a newbee to this fly fishing game and I just learned a year and half ago that the state of Tennessee stocked fish in different rivers. I need for someone to please explain to me how to tell one from the other, so when I catch a trout I will be able to say this one was from the hatchery and this one is a locale born fish. To me a trout in the river is a trout in the river. Thank you for your time.
WayneC
Go to the Blackfeet Reservation stillwaters and catch some of the stockers (no natural reproduction); it'll change your outlook.
Regards,
Scott
Betty,Originally Posted by Betty Hiner
Not in a single generation but when hatchery fish are "recycled" by becoming the brood stock, and this occurs generation after generation of brood stock, there is regression toward the mean. What happens is that in a hatchery, there is no mechanism to "weed" out the weaker fish as nature does in the wild. So the next set of brood stock will be genetically inferior to their parents. And this will happen generation after generation of brood stock until you have hatchery fish that significantly inferior to wild fish.
Hatcheries should be a way to provide fish where there would be no fish. Some fish are better than no fish. But to say that the average hatchery fish is the equal to the average wild fish is simply wrong thinking.
The argument that a holdover "naturalized" hatchery fish is just like a wild fish is wrong. If you hooked a holdover hatchery trout, you might think that it is the equal of a wild bred fish. But that is because you have no standard of comparison.
If you have 1000 hatchery young of the year fish and 1000 young of the year wild fish, only a few of the hatchery fish will survive to be "naturalized." If you hooked the best fish of the surviving natural fish and the best fish of the 1000 natural fish, the hatchery fish would be inferior in fight to the natural fish. In a direct one to one comparison, you would be able to feel the difference. But if you have fished only in a stocked fishery, you really have no valid way to compare.
Fishery biologists have compared hatchery trout to wild trout. Google the fisheries literature to check it out.
In nature, only the best of every generation survive to breed. Nature weeds out the genetically inferior fish.
This is the basis of Wisconsin's Wild Trout planting program. Wild trout are captured during spawning and the eggs are milked and fertilized. The wild trout are raised in hatcheries but wild trout do not tolerate the crowding of hatchery fish so fewer fish can be raised. Then a proportion of the fish are replanted into the river that the eggs were taken from to make up for the fish that would have survived a natural spawn. The rest are planted into streams to help create a natural reproducing fishery.
If hatcheries raised only wild trout, then hatchery fish would equal wild fish. Unfortunately this is not the case.
Regards,
Silver
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"..........Szent-Gyorgy
Sometimes the hatchery fish are fin clipped so they can be identified. This is done to identify fiihs planted in a certain year so that later studies on survival and growth rate can be done.
If you catch hatchery fish right after it has been planted and you keep it. The flesh on cooking will be white. A native fish or a fish that has been in the wild for many months will gradual change the color of their flesh.
Another way to tell is that the fins and tails of the planted fish will be worn away and scarred from rubbing on the concrete raceways of the hatchery. Check the bottoms of the pectoral, pelvic, anal, and caudal fins.
Regards,
Silver
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"..........Szent-Gyorgy
Wayne,
What Silver Creek stated on the fins being clipped and the tailrace scars is true, but, you have not noticed that because the fish I have put you on are all around the 13" length and the fins have all healed and the fish are healthy. The "stockers" with clipped fins and tailrace damage are usually around 7" to 9" and the clipped fins and tailrace damage will show on them.
I cannot explain the difference between the fight of a "stocker" or "wild" trout because the only rivers I have fished that contained "wild" trout also contained "stocked" trout and I do not know which one I caught. As an example, I have attended 2 Mich. Fish-Ins and have caught fish on both trips and I know the river there contains both but I cannot explain how you will know difference in the fight between the two.
Warren
Fly fishing and fly tying are two things that I do, and when I am doing them, they are the only 2 things I think about. They clear my mind.
Warren,
You wrote this response to the comment by Silver Creek that hatchery trout often have a fin clipped, "What Silver Creek stated on the fins being clipped and the tailrace scars is true, but, you have not noticed that because the fish I have put you on are all around the 13" length and the fins have all healed". Well, they may be "healed" but you certainly can identify the fact that the fin has been cut short. Trout do not regenerate amputated fins.
Allan
Last edited by Allan; 05-11-2014 at 01:49 AM.
After reading the original message, I was going to jump in on this but it seems everything I was going to say has been said.
So I'll second the posts regarding the weaker genetics of stocked trout, which can lead to weaker genes in wild trout.
Also...
Not necessarily true. As other have stated, the fins of stocked trout are typically damaged. And I'm not sure if its directly related to the damaged fins, but it seems to me that stocked trout put up less fight than wild trout.
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