Living in the MidSouth, I'm grateful to science for the opportunity to fish trout in the region. Most of our cold-water fisheries are man-made. Even the cold spring fisheries were artificially stocked at some point.

Here's a couple of interesting counter-points:

1. Pheasant - not native to North America. So that pheasant hunting you enjoyed so much throughout the years was the result of transplanting and cross-breeding. The Chinese Ringneck Pheasant was originally bred as a "garden ornament" for European estates.

2. Brown Trout - not native to North America. So even where we fish "wild" Browns, they were "planted" at some point.

3. Most of the tailwater fisheries in the MidSouth, Southeast, and Southwest were stocked with trout in order to rehabilitate sport fisheries that were destroyed by the construction of the dams. They're way better than nothing. And I'm sure they revlieve a LOT of pressure on the natural cold-water fisheries of the Northern Tier states.

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Fishing the Ozarks