Zach Matthews
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Looks like it is winding down in this part of the country anyway; the local shop has had Grizzly Whiting 100 packs in stock for the last few weeks.
Brian –
That is also a great post man.
You know here’s the thing I glean from that: after the bubble burst there was a real perception that the bottom had fallen out of the market.
Tim –
First of all, great post. Obviously all we can offer is speculation but we might be able to put together some informed opinions.
Brook trout were the classic and available trout of the Eastern United States until the advent of refrigeration and the discovery of successful ways to transplant trout eggs. The first truly successful “egg box” was invented by a Frenchman named Richard Vibert in the 1950s, which is how places like Kerguelen Island in the Antarctic Ocean as well as Argentina got stocked. Prior to that, trout eggs were packed on ice and had to be stocked within a certain radius of railroad terminals.
So, before 1900, there really wouldn’t have been many if any brown or rainbow trout in the Eastern U.S. Browns were European in origin and Rainbows are native to the Pacific Northwest. So that is not a Google anomaly but a reflection of the available target species in the most populous part of the country (and the the area of the English speaking world with the biggest publishing industry).
In 1900 you have railroad construction and I would assume a surge in interest in the newly stocked fish. That coincided with heavy logging in the eastern U.S., which cut down the forests which kept the streams cool enough for brookies. That’s also not long after the transcontinental railroad was completed, allowing shipment of rainbow trout eggs from the West. That wouldn’t have been a high priority so I suspect it took several years for anyone to have the time or wherewithal to even try stocking them. And no one realized how successful rainbows would be as transplants either.
The parity you see from 1910 through the 1960s could be because brookies were the preferred targets of dry fly anglers, which was being invented in the Catskills region of New York around the 1900-1920 timeframe and then perfected in the 1930s. Most dry fly how-to books would thus have focused on brook trout for that period. Meanwhile browns had also been stocked and carried an Old World mystique, so they would have been a target of opportunity, and finally rainbows in their native range in the Pacific Northwest were finally in an area with a growing population. This chart doesn’t reflect it but I bet overall numbers of fishing books were up too in that period.
Rainbows would have surged ahead in the Anything Goes 60s because that’s when the majority of exotic stocking programs were most active. Almost all southern rainbows were planted in the 1960s behind our new hydroelectric dams, for instance. That is right after the advent of the Vibert box I mentioned earlier. That’s also the nadir of the eastern boreal forest and thus the minimum point for available brook trout habitat.
Brook and brown trout increasing in the 1980s I think has two separate causes: browns for their trophy qualities as catch and release became the vogue, and brookies because their forests had grown back and they were both expanding their range and being subjected to intense re-stocking and interest from environmentalists.
The 2000 era rainbow trout decline could be due to whirling disease but I suspect you’re actually seeing market saturation and publishing factors at work. People got bored of reading about the same old same old, as I know well from my writing efforts. I have a pretty good idea of what kind of story a magazine would buy these days, I’d say, and nymphing for stocker snit rainbow trout is going to be at the bottom of that list.
Those are my wild speculations and rank guesses!
Zachhttp://www.itinerantangler.com/podcasts/2007/08/article_brake_jobs.html
Start by reading that; it explains the various types of fly reels.
A centerpinning reel is meant for a style of drifting with bait which is very similar to a dead drift for a fly angler.
Mark –
You need some kind of display tether:
http://www.southernimperial.com/security-tethers-a-10.html
http://www.southernimperial.com/round-end-first-line-security-tether-solutions-p-2387.html
Maybe that one?
Zach
Sweet, Peter. Do you have the canoes up for sale online somewhere? I’m sorry to hear about you quitting your job (it may have been a choice you made, but circumstances must have dictated that move) but anyway it certainly sounds like you have made the best of it.
Keep us posted man.
Zach
Jon,
Thanks for stopping by. Don’t you have some running to do though?
Hahahaah.
Zach
PS I’m sure that’s totally original…