Ok here's my take on is it wild questions.

[brookieaddict]

First off no offense to anyone who wanted to know if their fish they just caught using fair chase tactics and feathers et. string is wild or not. The qualifications should be, no liscence,name tag or stocker stamped on its body then I would consider it wild. It didnt come when called,or swam out of its hide to swallow your fly and then give you the fin me in sign did it?? I know thew purists are whowling about now on what an idiot i am ,but lets face it they come from fertilized eggs. They are raised either in the stream or in water divereted from a stream. After they lose their taste for pellets they regress to their ingrained predatory instincts to hunt down prey and eat to live. I think the stocker/wild thing is a by- product of snobbery that still plagues the sport carrried on by folks who think their doo-doo dont stink. We should be thankful we have a fish comish. that stocks our sorry streams as often as they do or we might be talking about our private water we pay a mortgage payment to fish on. Just my take on things dont want to upset the experts. B.A.

 

[MattBoyer]

brookieaddict wrote:
First off no offense to anyone who wanted to know if their fish they just caught using fair chase tactics and feathers et. string is wild or not. The qualifications should be, no liscence,name tag or stocker stamped on its body then I would consider it wild. It didnt come when called,or swam out of its hide to swallow your fly and then give you the fin me in sign did it?? I know thew purists are whowling about now on what an idiot i am ,but lets face it they come from fertilized eggs. They are raised either in the stream or in water divereted from a stream. After they lose their taste for pellets they regress to their ingrained predatory instincts to hunt down prey and eat to live. I think the stocker/wild thing is a by- product of snobbery that still plagues the sport carrried on by folks who think their doo-doo dont stink. We should be thankful we have a fish comish. that stocks our sorry streams as often as they do or we might be talking about our private water we pay a mortgage payment to fish on. Just my take on things dont want to upset the experts. B.A.

Ummm, so you're annoyed by people discussing fish on a fishing forum. I personally like these posts and always learn from them. I'm annoyed by people falsely attributing quotes to Benjamin Franklin, but I usually keep that sort of thing to myself. :-D

Boyer

 

[troutbert]

MattBoyer wrote:

brookieaddict wrote:
First off no offense to anyone who wanted to know if their fish they just caught using fair chase tactics and feathers et. string is wild or not. The qualifications should be, no liscence,name tag or stocker stamped on its body then I would consider it wild. It didnt come when called,or swam out of its hide to swallow your fly and then give you the fin me in sign did it?? I know thew purists are whowling about now on what an idiot i am ,but lets face it they come from fertilized eggs. They are raised either in the stream or in water divereted from a stream. After they lose their taste for pellets they regress to their ingrained predatory instincts to hunt down prey and eat to live. I think the stocker/wild thing is a by- product of snobbery that still plagues the sport carrried on by folks who think their doo-doo dont stink. We should be thankful we have a fish comish. that stocks our sorry streams as often as they do or we might be talking about our private water we pay a mortgage payment to fish on. Just my take on things dont want to upset the experts. B.A.

Ummm, so you're annoyed by people discussing fish on a fishing forum.

Boyer

What he said! On a fishing forum, there's always the danger of a discussion of fish breaking out.

It has nothing to do with snobbery. If a person catches a wild trout, that doesn't create any particular prestige for that person. Because wild trout aren't necessarily difficult to catch.

The discussions about wild trout have to do with an interest and curiousity to learn more about the fish we are fishing for, the populations of trout in our streams etc.

It's similar to the bug ID questions. It's curiousity, wanting to learn more.

 

[Padraic]

My take on people posting pics of their fish and asking if they are wild is this:

Computer monitors cannot show the depth of color and level of detail necessary to really know.

So you were there and if you say it was wild, I'm the last person to say otherwise. You saw the fish in all it's glory. Same thing for measuring fish. If you say you measured it at 19" and have a shot against your rod. I'm not going to double check your measurements against the cork handle.

I am excited about catching wild trout, because it means that the stream is clean and healthy enough to support it's own life. Men didn't have to raise the trout from eggs stripped out of brood stock, feed the fry pellets and antibiotics, and truck them to the stream.

If someone out there is depressed because a nice brookie they just caught has raggy fins and may not be wild, well, from my perspective that's not the point. How many wild vs. stocked trout you catch is just another way to keep score. I don't like to "score" flyfishing. I don't think that's the point either.

 

[afishinado]

brookieaddict wrote:
We should be thankful we have a fish comish. that stocks our sorry streams as often as they do or we might be talking about our private water we pay a mortgage payment to fish on. Just my take on things dont want to upset the experts. B.A.

We are just trying to "unsorry" some of our streams so wild fish can live in them, and we don't have to pay $2.17 plus shipping / fish to stock the stream every couple of weeks.

Also there are streams in PA that are not "sorry" at all, in fact they're beautiful, and we, along with the fish commish, want to keep them that way.

Each to his own. Good luck.

 

[Will]

I prefer catching wild trout for several reasons. First and foremost, catching stocked trout is similar to finding Easter eggs. Someone put them out there for you to find. Sometimes they are better hidden than other times, which increases the fun, but at the end of the day its a heavily man-made experience. Finding and capturing a wild fish in its own habitat is qualitatively different, even if it isn't always more challenging (though it often is). Second, but related, is that all the human activity involved in stocking has some significant negative impacts on the environment, from hatchery pollution to concentrating fishing pressure (with attendant destruction to riparian buffers, etc.) to introducing diseases and crowding out wild and native fish. It also seems to foster unrealistic expectations and practices with respect to harvest that are unsustainable when they get (mis) applied to wild fish. I don't mind catching the occassional stocked fish, and I think stocking has a place in maximizing fishing opportunities on marginal waters. But I also think there are both aesthetic (admittedly subjective) and resource protection reasons to prefer managed wild fisheries over put and take fisheries where possible. Finally, a word about snobbery. I've been fly fishing for about 30 years now. I have met, and interacted with, on message boards and the like, a few snobs. However, I have run into a significantly larger number of people with a chip on their shoulder about snobbery, who were looking to find an "elitist" under every bankside shrub. That's my perspective - your mileage may vary.

 

[pcray1231]

I enjoy both wild and stocked trout, but I enjoy wild trout more. I don't mean it to sound like an elitist tone, it isn't meant that way.

Fishing, by its very nature, is enjoyable because you are interacting with nature. Wild trout are simply more natural than stocked trout. Stocked trout are often in unnatural situations and act differently. Yes, various stocking techniques and time in the stream makes them "more" wild, hence holdovers and fingerling stockers are held in higher regard.

Are you a hunter? The pleasures of hunting are similar. Fishing for stocked trout would be akin to hunting fenced deer, the sport then loses an awful lot of the very thing it provides in the first place.

We have a few "sorry" streams, but by and large this state is full of high quality streams. Over 3000 wild trout streams is nothing to scoff at.

 

[noclue]

To me it kind of compares like this:

Would you rather marry a stripper or the girl next door?

The "STRIPPER" is like the "STOCKER" willing to show her tail and beautiful spots to anyone holding a twenty dollar bill(liscense) or would you rather marry the " Girl Next Door"(wild) who only shows her tail and beautiful spots to you when your presentation is perfect. The dissappointment comes when you think you married "The Girl Next Door" but you find out you landed a stocker!!!

Regardless to me they are all fun stocker or wild.

 

[wgmiller]

Padraic wrote:
I am excited about catching wild trout, because it means that the stream is clean and healthy enough to support it's own life. Men didn't have to raise the trout from eggs stripped out of brood stock, feed the fry pellets and antibiotics, and truck them to the stream.

I agree. What he said!

 

[greenghost]

noclue wrote:
To me it kind of compares like this:

Would you rather marry a stripper or the girl next door?

The "STRIPPER" is like the "STOCKER" willing to show her tail and beautiful spots to anyone holding a twenty dollar bill(liscense) or would you rather marry the " Girl Next Door"(wild) who only shows her tail and beautiful spots to you when your presentation is perfect. The dissappointment comes when you think you married "The Girl Next Door" but you find out you landed a stocker!!!

Regardless to me they are all fun stocker or wild.

LOL!! Now that's funny.

 

[troutbert]

It's all so confusing. That someone with the screen name "brookieaddict" would post that message. I'd think a brookieaddict would be a guy chasing wild brookies up on the little headwater streams.

And then the comment about "our sorry streams." But I read somewhere else on the board that 90% of our streams don't need any help.

And I read somewhere else that Amish are pigs and litter everything. But I grew up with Amish neighbors, and I'd would have bet serious money that Amish litter less than on average than the non-Amish population.

Teh Internets wuz supozed to inceese nowledge, butg I'f arreerd it's rootting my brainz.

 

[jayL]

Wild trout provide a more rewarding experience in every way. IMO of course. I am not above catching stockers, of course, but I consider myself a wild trout fisherman.

I have friends that are new to the sport and agree. We camped on an ATW opening day, then left for BFC to fish. Fish were caught in both streams by all parties. Everyone agreed that the wild experience was better.

It's mostly the location, not the fish. The fact that the fish are prettier, stronger, and act more naturally is a plus though.

 

[pete41]

take it off,take it all off.

 

[JackM]

troutbert wrote:
....I read somewhere else on the board that 90% of our streams don't need any help.

You read that 90% of our wild trout streams don't need help (in the way of stream improvements and the like), but rather just need to be treated with respect. Other than that you almost got it right.

 

[troutbert]

JackM wrote:

troutbert wrote:
....I read somewhere else on the board that 90% of our streams don't need any help.

You read that 90% of our wild trout streams don't need help (in the way of stream improvements and the like), but rather just need to be treated with respect. Other than that you almost got it right.

The statement that 90% of our wild trout streams don't need help is just completely wrong. There's no basis for such a statement.

A lot of people new to the sport may read something like that and believe it, and be seriously misinformed.

You'd be hard pressed to make case that ANY stream doesn't need help. Even on public lands, streams aren't safe. And they have in nearly every case been damaged by historical alterations. It would be nice if they would simply return to normal without help. But it doesn't work that way.

 

[littlelehigh]

noclue wrote:
To me it kind of compares like this:

Would you rather marry a stripper or the girl next door?

The "STRIPPER" is like the "STOCKER" willing to show her tail and beautiful spots to anyone holding a twenty dollar bill(liscense) or would you rather marry the " Girl Next Door"(wild) who only shows her tail and beautiful spots to you when your presentation is perfect. The dissappointment comes when you think you married "The Girl Next Door" but you find out you landed a stocker!!!

Regardless to me they are all fun stocker or wild.

Now if only Jack would have used these examples instead of the Sage Rod guys in the Amish thread I would of gotten his point!

 

[JackM]

You can feel free to disagree. The context of my statement, as you know, was that Maurice claimed I "had nothing invested" in such streams. I read this as some kind of claim that I owe the existence of wild trout to some group of which I was not a part. The truth is for people who are new to the sport to be properly informed regarding wild trout streams, they need to hear a balanced viewpoint instead of a skewed one where folks lay claim to the works of Mother Nature as if they alone are to thank for her bounty.

 

[spectorfly]

It's mostly the location, not the fish. The fact that the fish are prettier, stronger, and act more naturally is a plus though.

That's about right for me. I like wild fish and wild streams because I like to get out and get away from everything. Being in a place that is far from most people, no cell phone reception, thick brush on a tiny stream with colorful fish (brooks or browns), and nothing but the sound of the wind and the water allows me to relax and enjoy life. I get time to stop the grind and think about my week and things that are on my mind, things I need to take care of. It's a type of meditation that helps me balance my life.

 

[Dizzy]

Ideally I would prefer that every trout I catch would be wild… realistically I know that is not practical and I catch quite a few stockees and (perceived) wild fish each spring. It might surprise some (or maybe not) to find out that many of the great “trout rivers” in the northeast receive a variety of enhancements through various “efforts” to maintain their fisheries… and they always have.

I gave up playing the “is this wild or stocked” game a long time ago. True, the condition of some stocked trout fresh out of crowded hatchery conditions is pretty appalling… but after they’ve been in the stream a while they start acting and looking like “real” trout (especially in freestone streams). If I land 20 in an afternoon and someone asks me how I did, I’ll tell them “20.”

It’s a lot easier than saying, “I got 20, none were native, 5 were stocked by the PFBC fresh this spring, 5 were wild I think, 2 were stocked last fall by PFBC and held over, 4 looked like they might have been stocked as fingerlings, 1 was stocked by a private club and definitely a nursery-raised fish, 1 escaped from the hatchery during a flood, and 2 were likely hatched out of Vibert Boxes by another private club last fall… but in all honesty, I can’t be 100% sure about any of them.”

If they look good, take a fly, and fight hard… what more could you ask for. And if somebody really wants to waste my time with “wild or nothing” they better have the lab results from the scale samples to prove that it was 100% without a doubt the direct result of in-stream spawning… otherwise they are just guessing (like me).

 

[Spyder20oz]

Is this brown wild?