buckmaster

I fish in a fee fishing creek, where everyday bout 8am the stock man splashes me with fresh trout to catch.... How do you view this? Would you go as far as to say, that its like hunting a high fenced deer operation. It wont change what i do... i just bought a Pflueger president 6720x to go on my ugly stick and come the 2nd week of April you can find me there. but if this creek were not stocked there would be nothing to catch. How do you guys view this? Just curious.

Chuck7

Have fun

troutslayer

We've got alot of trout stocked lakes here in alberta and i pay for it by buying my fishing license, to me its not the equivalent of high fenced hunting, there the animal is cornered no where to run and without a doubt i going to gie, the stocked lakes the fish are well free just as wild ones in a way, its up to them to bite the hook, how could they fight and if they can get off the hook, they are able to grow big as well, so what im saying is they have alot more of a fighting chance then a penned hunt.

Plus it keeps alot of the lazy fishermen away from my honey holes

Phil from Maine

The same thing here, they stock some lakes and ponds with fish using fees from our licenses. I do not care for stocked trout personally unless they have been there for a couple of years first. That is just me though, I just feel they are to mushy and doesn't have such a great taste as a wild native one. Most all landlocked salmon here are stocked as well and you can catch some that have been in the water for a couple of years that are great eating though. We call it put and take fishing and as mentioned above the fish do have a fighting chance so, I am ok with it if that is what you have to fish or preffer to fish for.

troutslayer

Agree 100% i find the stocked ones have really white and mushy meat even during winter. There is one lake i will go to that has some stocked trout and also some wild ones that come down/up a lil creek, can definitely tell the difference when you are gutting them, white vs pink almost red meat

buckmaster

I concur with that, i can sometimes tell a difference from a freshly stocked compared to a stocked trout that has adapted for a while... the color scheme one a stocked concrete penned trout is just not as brilliant as the natural stream.

SwampCollie

I've got no issues with put and take trout fishing at all. Or any other put and take for that matter. A fenced in animal has little or no chance, even if you are a poor shot. However, if you are a poor angler, and can't hit the water with your roll cast, you don't have to worry about your hands smelling like fish.....

I grew up on a state owned operated trout hatchery in western VA (Coursey Springs Fish Cultural Station). My father was the manager of the hatchery at the time. Great place for a kid to grow up. We had something in the neighborhood of 45 trout ponds with everything from finglerlings to some real lunkers. Mostly rainbows and a few brookies. Fishing in the hatchery ponds of course is STRICTLY illegal. My favorite job of course was feeding the fish the brown pellet food. Chuck a tomato soup can of that stuff in and feeding frenzy is exactly what it is.

I rode with Dad all over the place in the fish truck stocking various streams, rivers and lakes. We'd always have a few folks doing what we called "truck fishing". Meaning they would follow the truck from the hatchery to where ever we were stocking that day. Back then, there was an actual Trout Season. Opening day around the hatchery was like nothing I'd ever seen until I moved to Richmond when Dad got a promotion and I went to the NASCAR races twice a year.

The hatchery is right on the Cowpasture River, which of course was stocked nicely with fish. Our driveway to the hatchery was nearly a mile long, and would be double parked with cars. Anglers in funny looking boots with long whippy fly and spinning rods and cans of corn and marshmellows would stand shoulder to shoulder to cast to one rainbow trout not 15" long. It was madness I tell you. Pure madness. I dug nightcrawlers in the back yard and sold them for $1 a dozen to anglers there, and also supplied the country store just up the road in Williamsville. I kept three washtubs full of bedding down in the cellar.

One of my favorite memories, just of the fish,was thatDad would always let me keep a "pet" fish. We'd take a brown trout about 15" long andput him in one of the ponds with the rainbow fingerlings. The fish was appropriately named "Stovepipe".When he died, I don't remember why he did, I think he weighed in something like 13 pounds (he got that big in about three years.... amazing what a healthy diet of protein rich Rainbow trout will do for you!). Lurking along the grassbank in the fingerling pond, he looked like a nuclear submarine to a country kid like I was.

We stockedDoughthat State Park every other Monday in the summer time. Dad, Mom and I would all ride in thefish truck together and get an eskimo pie at the camp store. There was a huge water shoot that we put the fish in to and they slid down into the lake. There would always be some retard in a canoe trying to catch them before they hit the water.Man I had a heck of a childhood!

buckhunter14

Catch all the stockies you want... [:-]