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 protested the most. Mother Nature’s version of the Brown, Rainbow, or Brookie won’t be able to compete – and we’ll be writing congressmen insisting our stream should be the next stocked.

Ten years of research has conceived the genetically super strain of Rainbow Trout, complete with six pack abdominals, broad shoulders, and  capable of peeling 400 yards of backing in a single run, adores mayflies, and can chew through dams and fallen logs.

According to Bradley, the number of muscle fibers in mammals is limited after birth, but in fish, muscle fiber numbers increase throughout their lifespan. Since inhibition of myostatin increases the numbers of muscle fibers, it had been a mystery as to whether inhibiting myostatin would cause an increase in muscle growth in fish.

-via University of Rhode Island

The problem is us. Once ova are commercially available and the barest of research is complete, some land owner will insist on adding “Bonehead Rainbow” to the upper reaches of his property – or some big city charismatic with visions of dollar signs will lease some drainage ditch and start selling memberships.

What fisherman could resist? Plentiful and enormous, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, and a known weakness for Peacock herl.

Twice the musculature as the normal fish and a viable breeding population that’ll shoulder the hatchery fish aside while racing up the Mississippi to eat all them scaredy-cat Asian Carp, then clean the beaches of small children, wino’s, and miniature poodles …

… while we clap and shout encouragement.

It’s in our nature. We’re practitioners of a classic blood sport, callous to pain and disfigurement, willing to complain loudly when something tastes bad or smells poorly, but in this we cannot be trusted.

Didymo looks like Goat puke, but if we could smoke it – or it had some form of innate beauty, I doubt we’d wrinkle a brow over its invasive qualities. Big muscular salmonids are what we’ve dreamed about for the last couple hundred years – and we’ll be complaining with great fervor should someone take exception to their spread.

License sales will soar, tackle will be obsolesced overnight, vendors will be ecstatic, and the rarified experiences of the pricey remote lodges will be available to the newly frugal.

Trophy lakes with named fish will lead the way, IGFA officials will be in a tizzy – and the former purists will find themselves alone with a dusty rack of salmon eggs, while the rest of us troll T-bones and wonder which of our neighbors is worthy of a ripped, muscle-bound fish whose delicate flavor is reminiscent of Tang mixed with stale bread.

Having posted on this subject two years ago, the only surprise is they’re here already.

Tags: genetically superior trout, superstrain, IGFA, Peacock herl, Bonehead Rainbow, Donny Beaver, goat puke, salmonids, genetic engineering, rainbow trout