Stocked trout

Are rainbows typically a stocked fish in streams like the main branch of the whitewater? I went fishing down in the main branch and was hitting a number or rainbows. I guess I thought that browns were typically a trout that was a hold over. Bye the way they were hitting something as simple as a samon egg imitation that was tied on about 12 inches below a small split shot. I had no trouble landing my limit in about 40 min and all of them 11 inches and bigger. I guess this was the other reason I felt that these rainbows were stocked.

They are stocked, in fact they were stocked in the past week just for the holiday weekend blitz. As you can attest, they aren’t a very smart fish (similar to the DNR pen raising deer and then letting them go in Whitewater the week before shotgun season). Thanks for doing your part and removing some of these aliens from the natural confines of the browns and brookies that naturally reproduce.

Really take those aliens out is right!! I know some people down in elba and no one likes or even wants rainbows in the streams down there. I think that the DNR just throws them in there for a “Third option” when trout fishing, I don’t even eat them but a lot of people keep them just to get them out of the system. But one nice thing about them is tangling with a 20″ is a great battle!

Lars

you guys really don’t like them things, do ya .

For those who like the sport of trout angling (and it doesn’t matter how a person angles), catching stocked raceway, pen raised, pellet fed, fish is not sport. Sure, some are pretty large and can be fun to tangle with, but they are foreign to the stream ecosystem. They were planted as stupid food dependent adults. If they were stocked as fingerlings and were forced to survive on their own and make it to adulthood, that’s another story.

are they better or worse than carp ??

Carp on a fly rod is often more challenging than trout on the long rod, no question. I’m not sugesting they stock Whitewater with carp; they should just quit stocking them in areas that already have decent brown trout populations. Put the stockers in the park area.

so would you rather go down to silver lake and catch carp on a fly rod or to whitewater and catch stocked rainbows?

I don’t live that far from Silver Lake, yet I have never fished it, nor do I have any plans. To compare trout in SL and stockers in WW is no contest – two different species, one in a lake, one in a river, one stocked while the other naturally reproduced. To answer your question, I’d rather go after a carp in Silver Lake than to fish for stockers in Whitewater. Now, if they want to stock some 20 inchers below the dam in Lanesboro, that’s a differnt story, in fact, I’d be very interested in catching some big brood stock on the Root. In Whitewater, Rush, Pine, Camp, Crooked, Winnebago or any of the other streams that they have stocked the catchables, then the answer is a definitive no.

that’s very interesting

one last point is that stocked trout sometimes don’t taste as good as a nice fresh native…

The Northeastern is right – they don’t taste worth a crap. Kind oflike eating an 8 pound walleye. I think, Jake, that I’ve made myself pretty clear about my distaste for catchables. Can we move onto a more entertaining topic of discussion? This one is starting to bore me.

Okey dokey