On Sep 21, 4:40*am, Bill Grey wrote:
In message
,
Giles writes





Quite no, Bill.....and kennie. *It's a numbers game, and that's a
fact......but it isn't necessarily a simple binary either/or
proposition. *If you dump ten thousand three-pound trout in a stream
that is all of three feet wide and a mile or two long, they will
indeed wreak havoc. *But three pound fish can't get into some of the
places that three inch natives might. *And the bubbas will be along
shortly to hoover most of their brethren out of the stream shortly
anyway. *Then again, that isn't really all that realistic scenario, is
it? *No, it isn't. *But outlining absurd extremes is a useful means of
creeping up on the parameters (yeah, I know the mathematicians claim
that word as their sole property.....tought ****) of a problem or
issue. *At the end of the day, making decisions about resource
allocation is a messy and almost always thankless task. *And the pros
learn as they go because the situation changes constantly.
Pronouncements about what happens and what does not, about what should
happen and what should not, about what is occurring and what is not,
how it should be dealt with and how not, emanating from rank amateur
observers should, of course, receive all the attention and approbation
that they merit......but, really, not much more than that.

Quite *or not quite!

Introducing 3 lbs + trout into an ecology which never did sustain such
monsters is an imbalance of nature.

Never is a very long time. Over here in the colonies we have the
advantage of a short and relatively well documented history. We have
it from too many reliabley witnesses to ignore that even tiny streams
that are virtually devoid of fish worthy of notice these days once
teemed with such monsters. New Yorkers willing to make the arduous
trek into the hinterlands of Manhattan Island were once able reap
brook trout such as most of us will never see for their
troubles.....from streams that no longer exist. I suspect the early
Celts would have found similar conditions on much of their home turf.

having huge fish available is only
an enticement for the greedy fish hingry anglers. *These topes aren't
really interested in the sport of fly fishing, rather they want trophy
fish and that makes them fishmongers ij my book.

Right. Availability is the key. Availability is what makes the kind
of scene I described above such a rare thing in the world today. I
believe that left to their own devices (i.e., entirely off limits to
human interference) many, if not most, streams would eventually revert
to conditions that would stagger the modern viewer as they did those
in North America in early post-Columbian times. After all, the fish
had millions of years to figure it all out and find what worked best
for them; big fish downstream and small fry upstream where their aunts
and uncles can't catch and eat them in the shallow water. It seems
likely that upstream spawning probably evolved as much as a curb to
predation as for reasons having to do with other physical and chemical
conditions.

By the way, some of the feeder streams of the river are devoid of fly
life due to the indiscriminate use of synthetic pyrethroid *sheep dip.
Thus fly life is seriously affected and means less food for the fish.

Just one more datum in an already inexhaustible and yet ever
burgeoning list of reasons to despair over the future of the planet.

giles