This is so true; the mystery of it all; the lost and missed fish are the greatest memories: “what was it?!” Forever etched into biochemistry.

I feel that trout stocking has created a monster of unreasonable expectations. It encourages excessive harvest, lackadaisical river keeping, “gold rush” mentality. On repeated occasions have overheard the conversations of stock chasers and the common theme is, “they don’t stock enough, in enough places, like they used to, what’s my stamp buying me?” Etc.
The big problem with this is it then infects all streams including non stocked ones where barbless c&r no bait rules apply. I find Styrofoam bait cups *every* time I fish these streams. Some have been obliterated during COVID.

Cheers

Thank you

Nice

Thanks Dom for your writing. You bring out the essence of what fly fishing means to me. Here in South Australia, it’s a very marginal trout fishery and usually tough going with low, skinny, clear, slow moving creeks. The browns are super spooky. But on the rare times your lucky enough to hook a fish (and in my case, it’s luck…), its the icing on the cake.

Thanks again.

Matt

“When you stock fish, you stock the size you want to catch. The hatchery fish suppress wild fish that would grow larger. But hatchery fish don’t live long enough to grow big.” Montana Fish Biologist Richard Vincent.

Targeting wild over “easy trout” is a great idea. Shutting down hatcheries is even better.