Maine Continued - Stocked Fish

Duties as a father have delayed my posts recently, but I am back at it on a rainy cool day (and Father's Day).

Yesterday, we drove up into the White Mountain National Forest on the Maine side (it is mostly located in New Hampshire). We were literally right the the state line border (see pic). I fished a small brook and the larger Wild River. It was nice to be in an area with plenty of public access. I get tired of seeing No Trespassing signs.

The small stream produced a lot of small fish, no big surprise. The bigger stream, Wild River, produced some nice big brookies. The largest fish was 12 inches, which, as you can see from some of my previous photos, is a big brook trout.

The smaller fish were wild (meaning bred in the stream, no stocking). The larger fish were likely stocked fish. Maine stocks many streams with good size fish.

Now, the point of today's post is, I have been fishing enough on this trip to be able to actually tell the difference between wild and hatchery fish simply based on how they act on the stream. For example, hatchery fish will approach a fly rather lazily. If they miss it, you can usually keep casting to them and they will keep rising. I had a fish yesterday that would make a half-hearted effort at my large fly. Since it was to lazy to eat the big fly, I put on a small fly and wa-la, he/she ate it on the next cast and I had a nice 9 inch brookie. Hatchery fish also do not fight nearly as hard as wild fish. Not sure why, but they just don't.

While I understand the need for stocking in some rivers, it is always nice to catch a wild fish because not only for what the symbolize, but also because you know the river/stream/brook is healthy enough to produce wild fish.

My field assistants enjoyed the Wild River with its large boulders and long stretches of quiet water (see picture). There were also fewer bugs on the big water, versus the forest shrouded brook.