I fish the snake around Shelly a lot, and have always done well on big browns, In the last couple weeks it seems like all my favorite spots are over run with scads and scads of small rainbows, I can't keep them off the line and don't really like catching them.
My question is why are they there? obviously they are planters. The f&g website seems to be down and I can't get to the fish stocking reports.
I have fished this stretch of river for years and it has never been a "hotspot" for rainbows.
I would rather catch 1 big brown than 30 10-12" bows.
[frown]
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I would think a big brown could eat a 10" rainbow pretty easily. I would be happy...all those browns you were catching should now be on high protein trout diet
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Put and take trout is about all the F & G know, also they had a draw listed so their is down. Happen every time, I wish they would update there site
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I ran a stretch up there last week and had the same thing, we still managed a couple nice fish but we did hit a bunch of little bows. I'm ok with them tossing them in there because a good number do feed the big boys and others become big boys.
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I'm to the point I think the stocking so much is sort of a joke. I sure would rather see our resources put into things that will help our fisheries long term like spawing area improvements, erosion control ect. Than just throwing money away with stocking.
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i belive many of us would agree but there are a whole lot more weekend fisherman that would rather catch 20 fish than 1 large fish, and also lack the skill to catch the larger ones. and without these licenses they would be loosing money
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If you work on improving habitat, and spawning beds you produce a longer term fishery with the type of 20 fish days you would want plus Tue chance to yank in big ones. Instead a bunch of planters are released with all short term and no long term impact. It's similiar to the pheasant planting......you put a semi wild animal into a wild setting.....short term is game/ fish to harvest but in the long terms islicense $ down the toilet
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Just for me personally it ticks me off, If I want to catch a bunch of little bows I would go to ryder park pond.
It makes it harder to catch a decent fish because you are spending all your time catching and releasing a bunch of crappy little planters.
especially when you are floating the river in a toon.
I'm thinking they planted them at Shelly park and they have spread up and down the river.
I guess it is time to burn a bit more gas and head to the north fork or henry's.
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+1, nothing worse than returning to a productive river than to end up being tortured by stupid planted bows. Sure a few really big fish get bigger but they compete with and stunt the medium size fish for years to come. Ending up with far fewer fish over 20 inches in a year or 2. As far as where they're coming from it's usually F&G that is so uptight about making their quota of planters that they shoot for 30% more than they need. Like only getting 80-90% of goal occasionally would be such a horrible thing. They then end up with more fish than they know what to do with and dump them where they shouldn't go. I refer to such waters as bow hell and stay away for a few years unless I got a newbie to get started. Did take a friend that never flied fished before to one such bow hell. He caught more than a dozen fish an hour with no instruction on how to fish until he was on stream. I didn't cast once. Not other practical use for such waters.
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