A television show I was watching the other day got me thinking about fish. Hatchery fish. Bad fish. At least that’s the general attitude among anglers these days.
The program was about food, and in this case the producers were trying to close the circle and give viewers a little background about where their food comes from. In this case it was salmon, so the host found himself in a fish hatchery, harvesting roe and milt from chum salmon to spawn the next generation in five gallon buckets. It’s a process recorded many times over, but since this was a food show, the host had a taste of his handiwork.
The not-quite-ripe eggs that were still held together by a thin membrane, also known as a skein, were fresh tasting and delicious. But the fully ripe eggs that poured out of hens when the hatchery workers sliced open their bellies not so much, at least so said the host.
We’ve come a long way when it comes to hatchery fish. Hatcheries were once touted as solutions to all that ailed our fisheries. Building a dam that will block salmon from historic spawning grounds? No problem, include a hatchery and all will be forgiven. Fishing pressure heavier than a particular river can handle? That’s nothing that can’t be fixed by a quick infusion from the stock truck.
We long ago learned hatcheries were no magic bullet. Montana hasn’t stocked trout in its rivers since 1974 as state biologists led by Dick Vincent realized aggressive hatchery fish crowded out wild trout. The result was declining wild fish populations, but the less hardy stocked fish didn’t make up the difference. These hatchery mutants didn’t have the instincts needed to survive outside the concrete runway.
Some non-fishing friends look at me as if I’m slightly crazy when I explain that almost all the trout I catch go back. In one sense they are right: fishing is ultimately about adding a little protein to your diet. By that standard, catch-and-release makes no sense.
Protein on the table is not the only standard by which we measure fishing, however. Many fly fishers such as myself have a peculiar preoccupation with trout rivers and their inhabitants. We obsess over wild trout and aquatic insects and all the other pieces that make up a healthy ecosystem. Because of this obsession we are happiest catching wild trout no matter that a well-stocked lake or pond a few minutes away may provide more action and bigger fish.
Remembering that initial rationale for releasing hatchery fish in our rivers, we realize that walking away from the stream each day with a creel heavy from a limit will soon leave even the healthiest of wild trout rivers fishless. So we practice catch-and-release. Some misguided folk even suggest catch-and-release is somehow more noble, but I’m skeptical. We are motivated by the selfish desire to catch wild trout. Fortunately, it’s the pursuit of this selfish obsession that fuels much of the conservation work in rivers across the West.
There’s nothing wrong with hatchery fish, in the right place at least. All one needs to do is drive over the mountains to the Blackfeet Reservation to be reminded of that. Head over, drill a few holes, and with any luck you’ll soon be into some of the best ice fishing for trout on the planet. But Rez fishing is almost entirely the result of hatcheries, as those Blackfeet prairie lakes are ridiculously productive places to grow trout, but lack the necessary tributary stream to provide spawning habitat.
One should never feel even the slightest remorse about filling a creel on a put-grow-and-take fishery. Maybe we should always feel some remorse when we kill our food, but, in this case, there shouldn’t be any conservation-related guilt.
I like wild trout, and I’m glad that fishery managers are increasingly following Montana’s lead by not fouling suitable riverine habitat with hatchery fish. There’s a time and place for the hatchery, but a pristine trout stream isn’t that place.