A while back I asked for some recommendations of fishing-themed books to read on my Kindle. The book I’m currently in the middle of, “An Entirely Synthetic Fish” by Anders Halverson, was released in 2010, so it’s not necessarily hot off the presses. But it is pretty fascinating.
Fortunately, this book has nothing to do with plant-based meat. No “Impossible Whoppers” here. What it is about is the observation that when one goes trout fishing almost anywhere in the United States (and really around the globe), the most commonly encountered species of trout is rainbow trout. Halverson really gets into the details of the “how and why” it got that way.
Spoiler Alert: a colossal amount of stocking of this hearty, hatchery raised fish spawned by the industrial revolution.
As someone who moved to the Southeast over a decade ago, this really resonates with me. While the Southern Appalachian brook trout is the native trout (char) of the region, rainbow trout, both wild and stocked, have become almost naturalized citizens of every cold water drainage; from the tiny blue line headwaters, to the broad, deep tailwaters.
So, on this 4th of July, the United States’ celebration of independence, I kind of find it ironic… (or is it coincidental…?) that I’m reading a book about an American trout that for better or worse has seemingly conquered the world…