One fell swoop and the Department of Fish & Game will have to rethink both their  stocked trout program and trophy fisheries management. Harvard researchers have published a study that concludes that friends of the obese will likely become obese also.

Hatchery trout have tons of friends, and if the research is correct, all we need do is make 40% of them obese – due to six degrees of separation theory, we will have made all of the planted fish fat and lazy.

Prepare thyself for angling paradise – large, slow moving trout, whose only crime was associating with other larger trout. Fly tying will enter a renaissance period, as patterns trend towards sparse and even lo-fat dressing.

It shouldn’t be long in coming, a canny angler will start making room in his flybox for the new “staples” of fly fishing; The South Beach Nymph series, Richard Simmons’s cReel-A-Meal, and the Jenny Craig line of carb-free low water dressings.