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The Batten Kill stocking: A matter of class?
If you've been following the Batten Kill trout stocking controversy, you know that the state, in the name of keeping hungry anglers happy, wants to stock the main stem of the Batten Kill with 1,000 sterile rainbow trout (fish whose sole purpose is to be caught and eaten; sterile so, in theory, the fish won't affect wild populations of brown and brook trout). The conservation group Trout Unlimited claims it's naive to think that such a stocking program won't effect the native fish. On Tuesday night, TU hosted a presentation by ecologist Robert Bachman at Burr and Burton's Riley Theater designed to reinforce its stance on the issue. Bachman, a former fisheries supervisor for the state of Maryland, was an entertaining speaker. A roundish, older gentleman, he projected the distinguished, rumpley aura of a college professor.
Mistakes don't matter at favorite place on Earth
But that big, beefy brown didn't gobble my fly, mostly because I forgot to tie one on my leader. I tied on a fly, bungled the cast and spooked the fish. So it goes. I hiked back to the first meadow of Slough Creek on Tuesday to fish for wild Yellowstone cutthroat trout -- which are as pretty as any tropical fish -- and to visit the most beautiful spot of my favorite place in the world. Slough Creek is gorgeous, but it's really for the trout junkies. Hiking to Slough Creek means slathering on bug spray, wearing that new outdoor clothing that repels mosquitoes, deerflies and other fanged insects and then hiking up a steep trail over a ridge for about an hour. I fear a swarm of deerflies much more than Yellowstone grizzly bears or wolves. Those evil bugs have FANGS, and they'll suck your body dry in less than an hour.
My other life - Robert Croft
I'm basically a boy from the country, from Hendy in West Wales. It's something I started doing in those long school holidays in the summer. My grandfather fished, my father fished and it just gets handed down like playing rugby in Wales is handed down from generation to generation. What was your first fish?
Like a cricketer I started with a net. My parents took me down to the local river and I caught a trout. I didn't know at the time that they had taken out it of the freezer earlier. But I didn't care I was, er, hooked after that. What sort of fishing do you specialise in?
Although I do some sea fishing I mainly fly fish. A friend of mine owns a stretch on the River Tawe and that's where you will see me going after salmon and sea trout. What has been your biggest catch?
My biggest fish to date was a beautiful 15lb salmon I landed last September at a stretch of river in Capel Dewi in Carmarthen - one of the most prolific sea trout rivers in the UK.
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