FishRook
I’ve caught what would have been the New Jersey state-record brook trout at least once. Maybe twice. Both goliath fish came from the same hole on the same river. Both hit wooly bugger streamers. I neither kept nor attempted to qualify either, of course, because I put them there. Well, not me specifically. But at the time I belonged to a trout club with private access to the river, and our dues paid for stocking our little stretch. Theoretically, though, because the water above and below our property was public, state-stocked, and our fish were free and clear to roam, those brookies could have gotten my name in the state record book. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d done such a thing, but another angler might not have thought twice.
We’ve come shockingly far in the last 50 years regarding what we can create in a hatchery. Fish are genetically modified to grow bigger faster. We dump hybrid species like tiger muskies and tiger trout into lakes and streams by…
