"Trout stockings take forever to knit. They have no hands"

posted on another blog by someone whose login is foreignoregonian.

I was talking to a fishing guide about my part of the river yesterday. He was telling me how one of the local fly shops leases various fishing spots around here, and when the topic swung back to here, he said '... but it's fun sometimes to fish these wild trout.'



I interpreted this to mean that some of these other places are being stocked with fish. For you non-fishermen this means fish are brought in to encourage sport fishing, because nobody wants to fish all day and not catch anything.

Here's how fishermen describe my part of the river:
"The trout in the Big Thompson regulated areas are all wild trout. There has been no stocking of trout by the state since 1994. The trout are not pushovers that will take any dry fly you present to them. You need to use light leaders and tippets and make good presentation with flies that imitate the insects in the stream."

My place is in that regulated 'catch and release' area meaning that any fish caught must be returned to the river, so the fishermen are catching the same fish over and over. The ones on my property are referred to as 'educated trout' because they know what a fisherman is, and are not easily fooled by fools with fly rods. The 'educated fisherman' knows how to figure out which bugs are hatching that day and use those specific ones.

This makes my water a bit of a challenge, but skilled fishermen do okay. I have learned to ignore the whining when some first-timer has an unproductive day; I figure it's partly a lack of skill.