The farmed fish industry may have gotten a bit of a reprieve from all the heat associated with the Frankenfish, apparently UC Davis researchers claim that while farmed fish are responsible for much of the sea lice the fish must navigate through – there’s less evidence  those self-same lice are responsible for the collapse of [...]

In the 80’s us lay scientists were full of ourselves. We’d embraced the fact that trout ate bugs, that Latin made us sound really intelligent, and the more syllables and body parts we could string together made us irresistible in a social setting. We were “trout geeks” and we ignored pocket protectors in favor of [...]

While the furor over Tiger Woods paving a half mile of a North Carolina trout stream has begun to subside, my regret is that I tipped you fellows to boutique fish first, and in typical conservation fashion you opted to think about it until the Pristine was in crisis  … Tiger settled with the court [...]

It’s a great subject worthy of much lampooning and bitter vitriol, but us sportsmen have no say in the outcome, will endure largely in silence, and be the first to point fingers when the inevitable occurs. Call it “Frankenfish” or whatever comes to mind, but the truth is the majority of the world’s population aren’t [...]

We can only assume a similar mechanism exists in fresh water, innocent fish lured away from the safety of fallen logs and deep pools to the shallow end where they can be caught. After developing for weeks at sea, baby tropical fish rely on natural noises to find the coral reefs where they can survive [...]

While the ignoble Brook Trout has enjoyed recent popularity due to its coronation as the Official Char of the Trout Underground, the question remains which Char is that exactly? Brook trout are exhibiting two distinct sets of behaviors, and scientists are attempting to determine whether it’s in the early stages of divergence – splitting into [...]

I know where they’re trying to push us, and while I have my share of suppositions I still don’t know who they are … The reviewers who offered their opinions about the scientific merit of our application, however, stressed that it would be more interesting to find out if a sharp object passing through the [...]

The true game-fish, of which the trout and salmon are frequently the types, inhabit the fairest regions of nature’s beautiful domain. They drink only from the purest fountains, and subsist upon the choicest food their pellucid streams supply … [It] is self-evident that no fish which inhabit foul or sluggish waters can be ‘game-fish’.’ It [...]

Just finished a deep scan of the 293 page California Draft Recovery Plan for Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead (9MB’s PDF), and I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed. Not so much the scope and cost as their reliance on dam modifications for the existing pristine – versus recovery of any ancestral haunts. The Central Valley [...]

With all the genes being sprayed at the tasty fish we should’ve known eventually we might get something other than a soft docile lump, content with pellet feed and milling aimlessly within its concrete lined habitat. All the gnashing of teeth and mention of asterisks will be done away with … and by them that [...]