Anyone made a trip this year?

[tjm]

I have no idea what MDC uses but - Purina trout food 

Quote

Ingredients
Fish Meal, Poultry By-Product Meal, Dehulled Soybean Meal, Ground Corn, Wheat Middlings, Wheat Flour, Fish Oil Preserved with Ethoxyquin, Blood Meal Ring Dried, Calcium Carbonate, Lecithin, Choline Chloride, Brewer's Dried Yeast, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (stabilized Vitamin C), DL-Methionine, Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin Supplement, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Biotin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Menadione Sodium Bisulfate Complex, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Manganese Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Cobalt Carbonate, Ethylenediamine Dihydroiodide, Ethoxyquin (a Preservative)

Soy is third largest ingredient.

Trouble with feeding the cleaning station scraps back to your stock is controlling any disease or condition that can spread by cannibalism. It likely needs more than simple grinding. 

[fishinwrench]

7 hours ago, tjm said:

Do you see large hatches of insects in Zones 1 & 2 of Bennett?

Little black caddis (#18-22) are thick in the Fall&Winter, streamwide.   Midges are too, but they are TINY.  

A little BWO that everyone calls a "Celery fly" (#20-22) is heavy in Z1 and Z2 almost every evening from April to December. Heaviest around weedbeds.

Scuds are thick around weedbeds everywhere, and Sowbugs are pretty thick in the stretch just above the dam, and also just above the whistle bridge.  

Z3 has some golden stoneflys, leeches, and tons of midges.

The hatches aren't "large", and they are spotty,  but they are dependable, and the fish in the area absolutely turn on when it gets going.

[fshndoug]

Good info Glen

[awhuber]

4 hours ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

Is that true or are you joking?  Hopefully non GMO soy.  And soy is estrogenic so that's not good either.  😂

I am not joking. They do not use Purina trout chow. I know the hatchery manager and he told they went plant based several years ago. They get the feed in by the truck load now.

[snagged in outlet 3]

16 minutes ago, awhuber said:

I am not joking. They do not use Purina trout chow. I know the hatchery manager and he told they went plant based several years ago. They get the feed in by the truck load now.

So carnivores are eating a vegan diet!   That can’t be good right??

[tjm]

1 hour ago, fishinwrench said:

Z3 has some golden stoneflys, leeches, and tons of midges.

Thanks for the rundown, I'd expect the farther from the spring the greater the hatch sizes and insect size. It's been so long since I was up there that I can't even picture the branch in my head, I recall pieces of it, but can't connect the dots.

But when people talk "Hatches" one thinks of the mayflies so thick you drive with the wipers on.

[Flyfisher for men]

Just now, tjm said:

 I'd expect the farther from the spring the greater the hatch sizes and insect size. 

I've always found the midge hatch much stronger in zone 1 than zone 2, but that may be just me. 

[tjm]

I always think of midges in ponds and tailwaters, so I'd kinda expect them near the spring. They just aren't one of my go to lures so I don't pay that much attention to them, probably should.

[Devan S.]

5 hours ago, tjm said:

Trouble with feeding the cleaning station scraps back to your stock is controlling any disease or condition that can spread by cannibalism. It likely needs more than simple grinding. 

Problem with putting fish guts back in the river is that its the number 1 complaint by people that don't understand fishing and ecology. 

The ten fold of people walking their dogs you speak of, they have kids/grandkids and they don't want their kids swimming/playing in nasty fish gut water, don't like the buzzards, don't like seeing fish guts, ect. 

But they will gladly go to any local lake and play in human sewage.

[awhuber]

1 hour ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

So carnivores are eating a vegan diet!   That can’t be good right??

They just gotta keep em alive for a while till someone takes them home. The real problem is the estrogen in the stream. One of the stresses identified for hellbenders is estrogen in the water.