tomitrout wrote:
Ha ha ha I do love it when people call brown trout "natives."
And I find it humorous that some folks like to make a big deal out of this...guess it makes one feel a bit superior when comparing themselves to someone they feel is less edumacated, or something.
Makes me curious about your opinion on Charlie Fox? Recently ran across a passage in
Rising Trout where he refers to wild browns as natives...so I guess he was just another clueless local (along with his editors.)
Equally amusing is those who make a big deal out of those who are allegedly making a big deal out of the term native vs. wild
I don't think many (all?) of the folks who use the correct term are doing it to be snooty. If you're using the wrong terms to refer to your fly fishing rig, wouldn't you like if someone corrected you? If the experienced fly fisherperson gives advice to correct a casting deficiency in a fellow angler, is that advisor being snooty?
What next? If browns are now "native" (even though they are transplants), will the second generation of New Zealand mud snails in Spring Creek be considered native? Both are still non-native invasive species.
Bottom line is the use of native vs. wild does not necessarily imply that the user is a clueless anyone, but simply someone who misapplied the term. But it is technically incorrect. But, in this day and age when anything goes, why bother with words having actual scientific meanings? Browns are at best naturalized citizens in North America, if I may draw from a political analogy.
Charlie Fox - great fishing legend, but that legend doesn't change the fact that he and his editors was factually incorrect. Or does his legend give him liberty to rewrite biologists' terms for ecosystem inhabitants?
Regardless of the vernacular used, the most important thing is that whether the fish is referred to as holdover, wild, or native, it is viewed as a special thing, one that wasn't pumped full of pellets to reach its size, but rather that was hatched in the stream, grew up on whatever the stream diet consisted of, and fell for the angler's particular offering that day. And hopefully, the majority of those fish are released to perpetuate the cycle again. Not sure how much of that awareness exists on Kish, but hopefully it is on the rise.
I propose we refer to all questionable origin fish as "natild". Or "wilive". If the words take, in a few years, Websters should add them to the dictionary.
