What will a buck do? I don’t mean a male deer. I mean a George Washington, an Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson or a Grant – the almighty U.S. dollar. Put and take fishing has been around for a long time and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the mainstay of every outdoorsman’s sport – fishing and shooting.

We live with so many contradictions as well. In Idaho, the state is up in arms about some domestic elk that escaped from a farm there out of fear that the domestic elk would ruin the gene pool of the wild elk in nearby Yellowstone. Now they want to outlaw all elk farming for this reason and to curb the spread of disease – which has never been detected in any domestic elk farms there.

The hypocrisy comes when the fish and game departments take a firm stand against such activities yet they themselves practice introducing domestic animals into the wild in order for sportsmen to be able to bag them and take them home. Under pressure to provide the game for hunters and fishermen, fish and game departments are resorting more and more to put and take. Is this about genetics or about economics? I think the latter. It depends on who it is that stands to make the money.

In Oklahoma, a cursed dam, that evil man-made concrete obstacle that ruins a good river some say, now has the blessings of the wildlife department. Why? Perhaps it’s a matter of “if you can’t beat em, join em” mentality.

The dam is located on the Lower Mountain Fork River in southeastern Oklahoma. Where once stood a free-flowing warm water river, complete with game fish like smallmouth bass, now stands a dam. Below the dam, wildlife officials have stocked the river with rainbow and brown trout.

The water that the dam owners use to feed their hydropower turbines, comes from the deeper parts of the man-made lake. This cold water finds its way into the stream below the dam. Of course the cold water forced the warm water species out, so officials decided to stock it with trout. Now fishermen come from all around to fish trout in Oklahoma.

Each year officials stock that part of the river with 100,000 trout bringing in anglers for more put and take fishing and adding dollars to the local economy – the bottom line behind such activities. Some suggest that fishing on the Lower Mountain Fork River brings in a million dollars a year.

As fishing evolves, all natural fish species and how they are caught will slowly disappear. Who knows, perhaps the future will contain “pay per catch” fishing or eventually “virtual fishing”. I opt for virtual fishing because at the rate we are going, there will be no water clean enough to support any fish.

Tom Remington

In Oklahoma, officials are still scratching their heads trying to find or prove theories as to why some catfish eggs found earlier this year were strangely colored. Here’s the previous story I ran back in June.

Officials may not have the right testing system in place. The tests they used were for examining fish skin not eggs as they claim they have never tested eggs before. That seems odd to me but what do I know.

The tests that were conducted were for pesticides, organic compounds and metals but all tests showed negative.

Have they looked into the possibility of invasion from outer space?

Tom Remington

Normally a bright yellowish color, catfish eggs in some bodies of water in Oklahoma are coming out florescent purple and scientists are stumped. Below is a picture of an egg sac removed from a catfish. The entire story can be read here.

Normal eggs below:

Tom Remington