I remember reading a Flyfisherman magazine back in the Eighties that attributed the exceptional size and growth rate of the trout in some Pennsylvania creek to an upstream cheese factory, whose rich effluents imbued the entire waterway with curds and whey.
Sure, it was white and unsightly, probably adding a little foam to the fast water, and stank like sour milk in summer – but who wouldn’t overlook any indignity if it grew bigger trout.
We were young and gullible then, and assumed that occasionally fish could win an industrial-age lottery, and while most creeks were imbued with things that rhymed with curds, somewhere we’d achieve symbiosis, where the fish received something from us that assisted their growth, instead of retarding it.
Now I’m questioning whether our UK brethren had it right all this time, that trout once stung by the hook will never take the artificial again. The only reason catch & release was ever successful is because the industrial age guaranteed both wastewater-borne and factory flushed – and we’d addicted a couple of generations of trout to painkillers, which neatly explained why they took our flies multiple times.
Pharmaceuticals turning up in streams and rivers have made headlines in recent years. Now for the first time in the U.S., researchers have shown that such drugs may come directly from plants that manufacture them. Research published in Environmental Science & Technology (DOI 10.1021/es100356f) documents that treated sewage effluent from drug makers can deliver to streams concentrations of painkillers that are as much as 1,000 times higher than levels in effluent from other sewage plants.
– via Chemical & Engineering News
Now that I’m aware of the issue, I’m not so sure I won’t lead with a couple of large rocks followed by a fleshy cannonball, it’s plain I’ll have to get down there and fight for my chemical teat, as them lazy arsed fish are deep and serene while huffing on leaky pipes.
… it’s either that or leave the barb up, once them mandibles are like a sieve it’ll be more for the rest of us.
Bergman, in “Trout” also has a story of a stream in New York whose fishing was exceptional due to enriched effluents from a cheese factory. I don’t have the book with me, but I seem to recall that his first impression of the stream was marred when he found the carcass of some dead critter in the water where he waded in.
That may well have been where I heard about it also. Memory loss being one of the symptoms of infirmity and all.
The fish in the San Jaun are a good example of catch and release river. There the fish will take your fly and then swim up to you to patiently wait for your to release it so it can swim off and do it again. Maybe a little hyperbalization but not by much, LOL. Some steams that once had fewer fish are now richer because of the fertilizer rich water draining into the main river/stream. Good, bad ?????