Hatchery Fish

[Caddis]

The other day was my first time visiting a hatchery since I was a little kid. My daughter and I had a great time feeding the fish these stinky little fish pellets.

Hatchery fish are pretty dumb or maybe the joke is on us. As you already know, fishing for stocked fish is a piece of cake. After they stock a river, your chances of catching fish are pretty damned good.

I observed fish trying to eat leave fragments and just about anything else that fell into the water at the hatchery.

There's a discussion going on right now about fish intelligence. Well, they know where the food is, that's for sure. While walking close to various tanks, the fish literally follow you around. I walked from one side of a few tanks to the other and was amazed at this behavior... they know they are going to eat when they see you. Selective? There's nothing to select, it's the fish pellets they're feeding on. I'm pretty sure I could have thrown handfulls of gravel in there and the fish would have eaten that too.

This explains why fishing in stocked streams is not challenging. It also explains why these fish will even strike a brite yellow strike indicator. They'll eat just about anything given the chance!

Fishing a river such as the Big D offers a challenge that no stocked stream can match. You have selective wild trout that will not feed on leaves or strike indicators. You must match a hatch for the most part of it while on a stream like this, and that's where the challenge is.

All of this talk about fishing in NJ Streams and what to use can be thrown out the window. Any nymph (w or w/o bead), any time will catch freshly stocked trout in a NJ/NY/PA Stream. You really don't have to be specific as to what you're using. Ok, so that's only partly true. After a fish has been in the river for a while, his selection will shrink.

That's it for today.