I’m in that tiny minority of fishermen that see the Big Picture and won’t lose any sleep over whether a trout fed on deep fried Snicker bars is a true world record or not.
I attribute my pragmatic view to the slow death of the quality water – and the inexorable spread of taint. Too many humans in too small an area begats a slow corruption of water, soil, and air.
You recognize the issue all too well and while you’d rather it wasn’t on our doorstep, you’ve witnessed a lot of your former haunts become a shell of what once was…
Humans have to eat and water is precious. If you’re of the school that only a pure strain rainbow is deserved “World Record” status, then it’s likely you still leave cake and milk on the hearth for Old Saint Nick.
Considering that steaks will probably come from an amorphous blob of cattle-like substance – grown in vitro so we can reduce bovine-sourced Methane, and fish will suffer some similar fate; a scaly mass – fed brightly colored proteins via a latticework of tubes, surrounded by white-coated freshman wondering which gene to add next. Science doesn’t care for your silly little pastime – they’re worried about the important stuff ..
.. like feeding all of us snobs for the next couple of decades.
The beauty of science is all the permutations we’ll see before that sodden mass is ready for filleting, and some of them will be unsuitable table fare, they’ll be adding a bit of this to a dab of that and something’s bound to escape.
If it doesn’t eat all of us or befoul what little planet is left, it might prove to be a robust gamefish – despite having to wear a shark suit when you fish for it, as wading in anything less means you’re bait (fishing).
In the meantime, lighten up a little. What we know is going the way of the Model A Ford, and what we don’t know may make you scratch your chin …
… like the Superfish I’m always giggling about. It might be here … now.
“The duo has been feeding rainbow trout a diet of 5 percent Creatine, the naturally occurring amino acid (contrary to some, Creatine isn’t a steroid or a growth hormone, Hayward says) that former Major League Baseball slugger Mark McGuire said he used as he chased baseball’s single-season home-run record in 1998.
The results show that some of the rainbows are responding to the Creatine diet like humans who regularly take the popular yet controversial body building supplement and follow a consistent weightlifting program.
They’re getting stronger ..”
Stuff some fatty triploid with Creatine and we’ll need Double Taper 9 weights for dry flies … and if 5% is good, 75% would be sublime.
Your kid will be munching on a fish burger, that’s still wriggling despite being deep fried, wondering how you endured those “quaint” natural fish – while he’s knotting on another Titanium treble-equipped parachute.
But that has not prevented the researchers from leaping to an economic conclusion. ”Fishermen probably would pay a premium for a chance of catching fish that fought longer and harder,” one of them said.
… and Mr. Trout Snob, your lofty ethics will fall by the wayside when a membership to Brawny Creek opens. You’ll be so busy reaching for your checkbook to notice you’ve drooled on your cravat.
45 pound Rainbow the new World’s Record? That is so last week…
Tags: Creatine fed rainbow trout, performance enhancing drugs, Mark McGwire, super trout, steroid trout, good old days, world record rainbow trout, triploid, fish burger
well played Singlebarbed, well played. Hope you don’t mind me linking to this story on my lesser site.
http://www.trout395.com/
Is there a waiting list for Brawny Creek? I’d hate for this snob to hold out until the price to join becomes prohibitive.
@Mike – link away friend – no issues here.
@Don – No waiting list – we check your cooler and if there’s no Pate’ in evidence, you’re accepted.
THEN you have to produce a case of really ancient hooch so we can toast you appropriately.
It’s not so much a question of what Triploid Trout eat (whether deep-fried or not), it’s the fact that they have been GENETICALLY ENGINEERED. And just like steroid users in the Olympics, allowing them to compete against all of the other “natural” fish sullies the records of all the great anglers who caught real trout in years past. Just because you seem to have lost all hope for the future of fishing doesn’t mean the rest of us should succumb …
@Yudo – good point. I’d be willing to wager that most of the trout we catch have already been engineered – ditto for all the salmon and steelhead the hatcheries have been churning out.
They would’ve tried to select the fittest fish or chosen resistant fish – or some form of less drastic genetics to give planted fish the best chance at survival.
It’s not engineering in the “test tube” flavor of triploids – but natural selection is “engineering” also – just less drastic.
I say we be thankful for ANYTHING that bites our fly – who cares what it is – or who’s it’s daddy.