wrote in message
ups.com...

Help me understand what is *really* going on here.


People are trying to reach a consensus on the best way to help improve a
jewel of a stream that has not been stocked in 30+ years that is under
pressure from a variety of threats. If the issue is habitat restoration and
threat mitigation, then planted fish, in this case rainbows, regardless of
their ability to reproduce in some people's educated mind will create
competition for the born in the stream fish that currently reside there. The
C&R issue is secondary to the issue at hand but you apparently can not
accept that.

If it were up to me and it's not, I'd declare open season on the browns,
continue to work with the various stakeholders to improve the water quality
and the brook trout population. And if I were to stock anything in it, it
would be brookies or browns if they could not be removed. Regardless of
what worked or didn't work in Colorado (I seem to recall them insisting to
dump whirling disease infected rainbows into their stocked water), the
stream conditions are different in the Battenkill. And that's not unique to
the Battenkill. Once you've seen one trout stream, you've seen one trout
stream.