This is interesting and at least a little bit surprising to me. I know Jeff, the guy who wrote the letter. I grew up with him, fished with him a bit and one of his brothers was a very good friend and college roommate of mine. For what it's worth, when I fished with him, he was solely interested in fishing spinners, although I do know that he tried to learn to fly fish at some point. I've lost contact with him and don't know whether he fly fishes at all these days or if he's still just a spinner guy. I do know that Jeff's NOT a poor fisherman. He wrote a book about fishing for trout with spinners (admittedly, that doesn't make you a good fisherman, but I can tell you that he is) and he's always kept a logbook about his fishing trips. I don't think 50, 60 or 100 trout days have ever been completely surprising for him, and I would think that over the years, the vast majority of trout that he's caught would probably be wild fish. Which makes it even more surprising that he wouldn't put two and two together and understand that if you want really stellar wild trout fishing, that you need to keep the stocked trout OUT of those streams. Especially if you're talking about native Brookies. I don't really have a strong reaction to his letter, other than being a bit surprised that he would have penned it at all. Hey to each his own, but in this case, I disagree with Jeff in a pretty big way.
