The history of introducing fish into American waterways is a story of interesting stories. Setting aside the ecological concerns of nonnative species for a moment, the paths taken by the ancestors of today’s trout and bass are remarkable. There are plenty of fantastical accounts of warming barrels of fry and derailed trail cars filled with parr. Of course, some may be apocryphal.
At the same time, when we watch a hatchery tanker filled with 100,000 juvenile salmon overturn and dump the majority of the fish into a river we can believe the fantastic.
This precise thing happened in early last week (April, 2024).
While we don’t know the end of the story, the beginning of this fish tale are certainly interesting: