The Trout of the future will prefer imitations to natural insects

I know I shouldn’t look, but I did.

There are thousands of highly trained scientists examining the diet and feeding habits of both salmon and trout. The Bad News is they’re doing so to determine whether they can be raised on Plutonium pellets, concrete, animal waste, or anything else we don’t want…

An admirable task that – but only once through the digestive tract shouldn’t be enough to diffuse weapons-grade anything.

As an interested bystander, browsing the findings of countless dietary studies on Salmonids, a couple of interesting points become clear immediately.

As the fish will be harvested at a given weight – rather than grown to full maturity, long term affects to the “crop” will be ignored.

Soybean meal has been has been used to partially replace fish meal in the diets of several fish but it is known to cause enteritis in Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar

Nice to know that in addition to being spray painted with orange dye , your fillet had the runs …

Don’t despair. There’s enough fly fishing scientists working clandestinely to improve all the trout fishing of the future. It’s the Perfect Crime, with the aquaculture industry an unwitting accomplice in building the first trout that likes artificial flies better than natural insects…

Woot. Got your attention now, did I?

The results from this study show that feather meal, poultry by-product meal, blood meal and meat and bone meal have good potential for use in rainbow trout diets at high levels of incorporation.

Fed feathers from infancy. No more pellets (which are hard to tie and float so poorly), instead our graceful trout of the future will have deeply rooted unnatural cravings for chicken feathers – and since aquaculturists are such tight wads, the secret color should be white.

I’m tying 2/0 White Millers by the bushel.

Tags: Feather Meal, blood meal, chicken feathers, farmed trout, Plutonium, pen raised, salmon, soy-induced enteritis, artificial flies, fly fishing humor