Over the past years, I have volunteered with both CA Fish and Game and
Nevada Fish and Wildlife in planting fish. The biologists believe that few
of the large fish planted will survivie. However, they only plant where
there is a large population of fishermen. To them, success is having 100%
of the fish caught and a few more fishing licenses sold. Some do survive
though because some are caught a long ways from where they were planted, and
a lot larger than the typical plant. Also , anything you catch in a lake
was probably planted. These often grow to very large sizes.
We have been able to get both departments to plant fingerlings in some of
our rivers. These cost the departments almost nothing because thay have not
eaten much. therefore where they may only stock a 100 or so large fish,
they will plant 10,000 fingerlings. The hope is that a few percent will
survive and have the characteristics of wild fish. Unfortunately there have
been no studies to see if this is successfull.
Also, few of our rivers will sustain a wild fish population unless they are
catch and release...and patrolled!! Again, the game wardens will nly patrol
areas where there is a largae population of fishermen!

--


---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Are you still wasting your time with spam?...
There is a solution!"

Protected by GIANT Company's Spam Inspector
The most powerful anti-spam software available.
http://mail.spaminspector.com


"Tom G" wrote in message
...
So the other day my daughter & I kept three fish for dinner. For those
of you aghast at my political incorrectness, I offer no apology. FWIW,
these were not wild fish. Indeed, we were so close to the hatchery it'd
be embarrassing for me to fish there without my daughter.

Two of the trout had white flesh while the third had orange/pink flesh.
Not as pink as the (landlocked) Dolly Varden I used to catch in Alaska,
but distinctly _not_ white.

Coincidentally, the 'orange' fish had a belly full of bugs while the two
'white' fish had very little in their stomachs.

My assumption, and I'd like to think the obvious one, is that the
'orange' fish had been in the creek substantially longer than the
'white' fish. Long enough to learn how to eat and even thrive in the
wild. OTOH, I figure that the 'white' fish were relatively new to the
stream and hadn't figured out how to eat & thrive in the creek.

Now I'm wondering about the lack of survival skills in hatchery fish.
How many of them fail to thrive in the wild because they don't know
how/what to eat? Could this be part of the problem with the low success
rate of fish restoration projects like the one Stan Gula was working on
with Salmon in Massachusetts? Does this imply that preservation is even
more important because restoration is not an effective possibilty after
preservation has failed?

Just a thinkin' and wonderin'...
Tom G
--
email:remove tt