Last year I watched a stocking trout at a bridge dropping in fingerlings. I smiled and walked up and talked to her. To my amazement they were rainbow fingerlings.
This bow was caught in that stream. There is ZERO chance this bow grew from a fingerling.
Another released brooder in that same waterway.
They are fun to catch because they are so powerful… but fingerlings? ALL I could figure is maybe those little bows are food for the big browns in the stretch. Spending money stocking fingerling bows is like pouring our resources down the drain..
Rainbows don’t naturally reproduce in our waters here in Southwestern Wisconsin. The brooder bows are patterned by nature to go down stream. They typically leave the waterway they are stocked in a year or so. These brooder bows are fed liver pellets their entire life at the hatchery. Their meat is soft and tastes nasty.