On 2009-09-20 15:29:32 -0400, Bill Grey said:

In message , Ken Fortenberry
writes
Todd wrote:
My section of river only gets stocked once a year. Twice if they have
too many trout at the hatchery. They call it a gift. The stockers
only last about three weeks. So, most of the time I have the river
all to my self and I play with the remaining wild trout. The wild ones
are easy to tell apart by their fins, colors, and attitude.

If your river is stocked annually it's likely your river does
not have a sustaining population of wild trout. I don't know
where you are, but most states have stopped dumping stockers
in waters with wild trout. What's left after three weeks or
into the next season would be holdovers.


Quite so Ken! One local club tends to stock with brown up to 3 lbs in
weight. To me that is ridiculous. For the kids that catch them then
it's all good fun but ecologically the river just can't sustain such
creatures when you consider the few indigenous fish that survive don't
grow to more than about 12 inches - if they're lucky.

They used to do that when I was a kid in Springfield, Mass. They'd
stock big rainbows, what they called "strippers", meaning that they
were used only to strip the eggs from them. They usually put them in
"kid's" water. I can remember catching a couple on spin tackle when I
was 10 or 12.

Dave