Fingerling Bows????

  • LenH
    Wisconsin
    Posts: 2385
    #1319645

    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.

    moxie
    Sioux City,IA
    Posts: 874
    #1186073

    I can smell and almost taste these through your pics.

    mossydan
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa
    Posts: 7727
    #1186133

    Nice fish and pictures Len. Not to say anything to the contrary about the trout there reproducing, the DNR here that stocks all the N.E. Iowa streams say there is a small amount of reproduction in our streams, not very much but there is a small amount, %age wise I don’t know.

    Back when I was in my teens and early 20’s the DNR stocked 1,200 miles of trout springs, creeks and rivers in N.E. Iowa, now I think its down to around 800 miles of trout water. At the hatchery in Manchester Iowa you can walk through and look and see all the trout at varied ages, that are in the raceways.

    There’s gumball machines that have their food in them and you put in a dime I think, and you get a handfull of food to throw to them in the raceways. The food is a green brown color that looks like is has some alfalfa or something in it, maybe the shade of brown is liver like you said. Millions of fish in that hatchery and its a pretty nice setup. There’s a brooding house with all the different raceways that hold the fry, small premature sized fish, stocking sizes and brood stock, for rainbows, browns and brookies. Its pretty interesting.

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