The state seems to have stocked rather a lot of tiger trout in the fall of 2020 and those buggers definitely spread pretty far beyond where they were dumped. After the big snowfall in mid December, I made my way to my old "part-time home river" to look for one of its big wild brown trout. The magic of this river and its fish are their apparent immunity to temperature. In fact, the colder and worse the weather is, the better it seems to fish. Even on 30 degree days with blowing snow, I've gotten large browns to chase big streamers in this odd little river.
I'd been on such a single hook fly kick all year that I decided this day I'd fish nothing but a Drunk & Disorderly. I've raved about the D&D for years. Back in 2015 I saw a video of Tommy Lynch tying his signature fly and it just looked so unique I had to try it. A few sloppy attempts later, I had something fishable. Fish moved to it so unabashedly it altered my streamer fishing for ever. That fly and the Heifer Groomer taught me the magic of action in a trout streamer. It was something I'd not been paying enough attention to prior. The D&D had taken a few solid fish in this stream over the years so it was a perfectly reasonable choice this time.
A few pools into my outing I had a violent slash on the surface. I was sure it was a good brown but I blew it completely. On the next cast it came back, though, and I was sure it wasn't a brown. It is extremely rare in this river that one of the wild trout gives me more than one shot. Indeed it wasn't a brown. It was a tiger, my fifth of the year. I rolled my eyes when I realized what it was. These fish are too easy when you find them.
Less than 50 yards further came yet another violent take and yet another tiger trout. This was getting absurd.
The irony of these tiger trout being so abundant is that they'd moved away from anywhere that gets fished routinely. The state's whole premise with fish like this is providing fisherman the opportunity to catch something new and "cool." I just wanted to catch something that had actually been born in the river. Instead I was getting pellet fed hybrid truck trout. Eventually I did find something wild, though not as big as I'd have liked. Just one small wild brown trout fell to the D&D this day. But it was a pretty fish, at least.
The stretch of river I was fishing is managed as catch and release only. I wonder how often the fisheries managers think about the fact that their hatchery-raised trout are dying every winter and summer, needing to be replenished twice a year. All the while wild brown trout and few but not non-existent native brook trout manage to survive each year's worst weather. It's almost as if it's a waste of resources.
Many fisherman, unfortunately, would just think their fish were being taken away from them if the state stopped stocking rivers like this. The culture that has developed around trout in the Northeast is an unfortunate one. It comes to the detriment of the quality of our wild and native fisheries, and worsens the experiences for those that are really in search of what makes fishing exciting.
Right on, that seems to be the norm everywhere. States are stalking fish in water they shouldn't be just to provide a few jobs. That fly did the job.
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Some places have gotten the message, and the quality of their fisheries speaks for itself.
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