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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.
Fishing is escape from war
Von Hagen spent a year as a civilian contractor stationed in Iraq, where he refused to let the fighting disrupt his fishing. His favorite fishing hole? One of Saddam Hussein's private lakes. "I was stationed in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown," said Von Hagen, 38, who attended Hillsboro High and Western Kentucky University. "When I arrived, I discovered three fairly large lakes in a walled-off compound that contained about 30 of Saddam's palaces. Being a fisherman, I immediately checked them out and found that the lakes were full of big fish, mostly carp and shad." Von Hagen wrote home, asking for his fishing tackle to be shipped. "The biggest fish I caught weighed 25 pounds," he said. "I caught it on spinning tackle. Then I started fly fishing, catching fish weighing three, four pounds.
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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