![]() ![]() ![]() But what of the ones that do adapt enough to survive? Don’t they learn to find natural food, don’t they blend in, learn the rules of the stream and become wild? No. And they don’t become “wild” just by placing them in a wild environment. So then, stocked trout are genetically different than their wild counterparts. And that quality is nothing like our wary wild trout. What makes a trout grow fast? They feed aggressively. So biologists select the fastest growers to be the next breeders. The faster a fish develops, the sooner it can be sent to the river. Likewise, hatcheries do best when trout grow quickly. READ: Troutbitten | Clarity and Science about Wild vs Stocked Trout For even more reading on the subject, work through the contained bibliography.) (For a thorough, science-based reading of the hatchery system in the US, and its history, check out Anders Halverson’s book, An Entirely Synthetic Fish. It seems that stocked trout are ill equipped for a wild environment. ![]() Conditions and rivers vary, but the estimated rate of return can be lower than five percent. The return on hatchery fish - the ones that make it through a full year - are shockingly low, even where they are protected by special regulations like catch and release. However, the same strains, selected to thrive in a hatchery, are poor performers in the wild. And these hatchery trout produce eggs for the next generation. So fish biologists select the trout most resistant to such disease. They harbor schools in the thousands of trout per ten-foot-wide tank. Hatcheries are prone to the outbreak of disease, because so many fish are in close proximity. These hatchery fish are the result of science. So hatcheries promote trout strains that live best in a hatchery. Most stocked trout are from hatchery strains that have been genetically selected to grow fast and feed aggressively. Hatchery trout are the opposite of all that. The strength to thrive and persist is in those wild genes. The best wild trout populations are specific to their own river systems, and they’ve adapted to the seasonal highs and lows, to whatever the decades of chance have brought to the collective population. And their genes are largely unaffected by the progress and intrusions of mankind. Or maybe it’s a strain of German brown trout, introduced to many American river systems in the late 1800’s. Perhaps it’s a native population of brook trout, present in the Appalachian streams since the last ice age. The best wild trout come from a gene pool that has existed in the watershed for generations. Does that trout take on the characteristics of a wild fish? It’s in the Genes But again, this article is about what happens when a trout is stocked in a stream. Surely, we all recognize that the brown trout introduced over a hundred years ago into various parts of the United States are now wild trout, and they act like it. ** Note ** This article has received some comments that miss the point. Stocked trout are a different animal, and they tend to stay that way. I’ve caught a lot of trout, both wild and stocked, and there’s a clear difference between the two. But I don’t buy it - not because I’m guessing, but because of what I’ve seen and experienced over decades on the water. I’ve heard it a lot and understand the argument. Now, I’m well aware of the dissenting opinion. In short, stocked fish are stocked, and there’s no amount of time in the water that changes that. It’s the premise that stocked trout adapt to their surroundings, that they take on the characteristics and habits of their wild counterparts. Anglers of all experience levels have levied this argument, likely from the time stocked fish were first planted in a river. “Once a stocked trout is in the river for a while, it becomes just like a wild one.” I hear this idea a lot. ![]()
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