The problems with hatchery trout have not gone entirely unnoticed by anglers. Art Lee is an American trout fishing legend and author of the book Fishing Dry Flies for Trout on Rivers and Streams. Lee is a professional angler and writer of angling stories who lives on Willowemoc Creek, one of the more revered waters in the Catskills. He has among his close friends, former President Carter, who was kind enough to write a short introduction for Lee’s book. Lee spends more than 250 days per year fishing, and certainly must have learned a bit about rivers and trout in that time. I will admit that in reading many angling books, I repeatedly found items that I found disturbing. In contrast, Lee provided some refreshing admissions and observations that I truly appreciated.
Lee generally maintains a sense of balance as an author and angler and admits that fishing can cause people to lose their perspective. He reminds the reader that “governments don’t fall, after all, for the want of a trout” (p. 49). I enjoyed reading his statement that “you are the earth’s deadliest predator” (p. 47). I was even more smitten with an interesting chapter on the flow of water in rivers that does a very respectable job of conveying the complex patterns I study as a fluvial geomorphologist. However, the item that really caught my attention was the comment that, “If I had my ‘druthers’ I’d never catch another hatchery trout” (p. 4). He says he can tell a hatchery trout from a wild one just based on its fin shape. The hatchery trout literally blunt or lose their fins entirely from abrasion on the lining of the holding tanks, nipping from other trout, handling by hatchery staff and water quality. Lee talks about too much stocking and repeats an old saying, “you can take the trout out of the hatchery, but you can’t take the hatchery out of the trout” (p. 8). The conservational biologists Brown and Day seem to agree with that sentiment. He ends the book with the statement that “nature can’t talk to anyone too distracted to listen” (p. 290). I think I would interpret this quote a bit more broadly than most readers and suggest that fishing itself can be a diversion from nature. Many of the wild attributes of famous fishing spots throughout the country are now more imagined than real with man-made structures constructed to provide fish habitat. The trout themselves may be diverging genetically from the native fish, or a different species altogether. It would seem that nature itself is increasingly divorced from the modern practice of fishing.
Lee generally maintains a sense of balance as an author and angler and admits that fishing can cause people to lose their perspective. He reminds the reader that “governments don’t fall, after all, for the want of a trout” (p. 49). I enjoyed reading his statement that “you are the earth’s deadliest predator” (p. 47). I was even more smitten with an interesting chapter on the flow of water in rivers that does a very respectable job of conveying the complex patterns I study as a fluvial geomorphologist. However, the item that really caught my attention was the comment that, “If I had my ‘druthers’ I’d never catch another hatchery trout” (p. 4). He says he can tell a hatchery trout from a wild one just based on its fin shape. The hatchery trout literally blunt or lose their fins entirely from abrasion on the lining of the holding tanks, nipping from other trout, handling by hatchery staff and water quality. Lee talks about too much stocking and repeats an old saying, “you can take the trout out of the hatchery, but you can’t take the hatchery out of the trout” (p. 8). The conservational biologists Brown and Day seem to agree with that sentiment. He ends the book with the statement that “nature can’t talk to anyone too distracted to listen” (p. 290). I think I would interpret this quote a bit more broadly than most readers and suggest that fishing itself can be a diversion from nature. Many of the wild attributes of famous fishing spots throughout the country are now more imagined than real with man-made structures constructed to provide fish habitat. The trout themselves may be diverging genetically from the native fish, or a different species altogether. It would seem that nature itself is increasingly divorced from the modern practice of fishing.