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Autumn On The EB
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Rainbow Trout And Current Conditions
"For the moment at least, we fall into that class of fishermen who fancy themselves to be poet/philosophers, and from that vantage point we manage to pull off one of the neatest tricks in all of sport: the fewer fish we catch the more superior we feel" John Gierach
I've just about finished, for the second time, a book called "An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and and Overran the World" by Anders Halverson. This book should be required reading with every fishing license purchased because it shows how our license and sporting tax money is used to support and prop up the indefensible action of stocking hatchery rainbows that basically don't have a chance of surviving for a season. And all of this is to placate the " catch and keep crowd" who, by the Fourth of July, have put away the power bait and bought more rubber worms. You would think that the DFW would want to develop a hardier fish (say, brown trout) to put in our rivers. That would give the DFW the most bang for their buck even though the catch and keep crowd would scream if someone tampered with their rainbows.
Most fishers who fish moving water are flyfishers and they fish all season long and they want a fish that doesn't pull a disappearing act like rainbows. Do what Connecticut and New York do: STOCK BROWNS and try to develop a stain that can reproduce in the wild.
Go Fish
Don't ask me where, just GO. The rivers are fine (maybe a bit too low) and there are fish.
Ken
6 comments:
Andrew Milmore
said...
I dont necessarily think that there is anything implicitly wrong with stocking rainbows for the catch and keep crowd - they are just as entitled to their hobby as the fly fishing catch and release folks. If the population dies - does it really matter? If nothing else it gives the ospreys and big girl largemouths more food.
Agreed that we should stock MORE browns but there have been spots stocked with browns in Massachusetts. Maybe a focus on streams for browns and ponds for rainbows?
Then again - there are some huge browns from kettle ponds being caught. If someone gets a rush from catching one of those on a glob of powerbait - so be it. They were introduced from europe anyway and there are states out west that are frantically trying to control the population of browns.
It seems to be the trend to put the rainbows in and I can understand throwing them into ponds where a lot of the catch and keep crowd fish anyway. It's already established knowledge that many of our streams some stocked some not do support reproducing browns and many if not all of the streams that receive stocking end up with some holdover population that can gain some size. One of my favorite times to fish is in September after some rain has refreshed our streams and before the dfw does the fall stocking. In my experience most and I mean 99 percent of the fish I catch during this time are browns, and although a lot of these streams get very low or warm during summer the browns seem to hang on they seem to spread out and in a lot of cases can push into the 18"+ category. It's clear our waters in MA are better suited for brown trout then rainbows. I always heard the state doesnt put as many browns ( with many going to C&R areas) BECAUSE of their ability to holdover, thinking that the risk of contaminants could be higher. Who knows but I would like to see more browns
When we submitted the idea of C&R on the Millers it was with the reasoning that if you released the browns you wouldn't have to worry about someone eating them.
Andrew,
The DFW is playing around with a fee(s) increase soon. Maybe they should work on finding a replacement for rainbows which appear to disappear.
Ken checking my other fish blog (sorry) saw a article of april 8 2021 about the electroshocking on the swift So check out the on the waters web page. And indeed a beautiful time of year thru july ! What to do so many species to fish. trout salmon shad starting stripers as soon as apple bloom Just great just fish anywhere. Tincup
I saw that article about the Swift. Why electroshock again? They have been zapping the hell out of that river for the past two years and plan to do more. Don't know where the bows go? Replace them with browns like CT and NY. Throw the bows into ponds for the frying pan crowd. Simple observation shows that the vast majority of stream fishers are fly fishers and we want to stretch the resource out and not have it disappear.
6 comments:
I dont necessarily think that there is anything implicitly wrong with stocking rainbows for the catch and keep crowd - they are just as entitled to their hobby as the fly fishing catch and release folks. If the population dies - does it really matter? If nothing else it gives the ospreys and big girl largemouths more food.
Agreed that we should stock MORE browns but there have been spots stocked with browns in Massachusetts. Maybe a focus on streams for browns and ponds for rainbows?
Then again - there are some huge browns from kettle ponds being caught. If someone gets a rush from catching one of those on a glob of powerbait - so be it. They were introduced from europe anyway and there are states out west that are frantically trying to control the population of browns.
Ken -- can't agree more on your recommendation of Entirely Sythentic Fish. Such an eye-opener.
It seems to be the trend to put the rainbows in and I can understand throwing them into ponds where a lot of the catch and keep crowd fish anyway. It's already established knowledge that many of our streams some stocked some not do support reproducing browns and many if not all of the streams that receive stocking end up with some holdover population that can gain some size. One of my favorite times to fish is in September after some rain has refreshed our streams and before the dfw does the fall stocking. In my experience most and I mean 99 percent of the fish I catch during this time are browns, and although a lot of these streams get very low or warm during summer the browns seem to hang on they seem to spread out and in a lot of cases can push into the 18"+ category. It's clear our waters in MA are better suited for brown trout then rainbows. I always heard the state doesnt put as many browns ( with many going to C&R areas) BECAUSE of their ability to holdover, thinking that the risk of contaminants could be higher. Who knows but I would like to see more browns
Paul Fay,
When we submitted the idea of C&R on the Millers it was with the reasoning that if you released the browns you wouldn't have to worry about someone eating them.
Andrew,
The DFW is playing around with a fee(s) increase soon. Maybe they should work on finding a replacement for rainbows which appear to disappear.
Ken
Ken checking my other fish blog (sorry) saw a article of april 8 2021 about the electroshocking on the swift So check out the on the waters web page. And indeed a beautiful time of year thru july ! What to do so many species to fish. trout salmon shad starting stripers as soon as apple bloom Just great just fish anywhere. Tincup
Tincup,
I saw that article about the Swift. Why electroshock again? They have been zapping the hell out of that river for the past two years and plan to do more. Don't know where the bows go? Replace them with browns like CT and NY. Throw the bows into ponds for the frying pan crowd. Simple observation shows that the vast majority of stream fishers are fly fishers and we want to stretch the resource out and not have it disappear.
Ken
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