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Went for 2 days for a fishing trip (Hello? Of course.) to northern MI. It was a blast, new fish just came in after the first rain in almost 4 weeks. The run is not at peak yet. Chuck-and-duck worked with green and sand color flies. We started with 8 pound leader but it did not help so we elevated it the 12 pound leader (6 feet long). We saw a lot of fellow fishermen. I imagine the pressure the river will get this next weekend. Some picture from the trip are below this post. Ohio steelhead? Here we come.
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In an age of biotechnological juicing, not even the easygoing pastime of fishing is free from controversies over artificial enhancement.
On September 5, Saskatchewan fisherman Sean Konrad caught a 48-pound, world-record rainbow trout. The fish came from Lake Diefenbaker, where trout genetically engineered to grow extra-big escaped from a fish farm nine years ago.
The previous world record was held by Sean’s twin brother Adam, who pulled a 43-pound, 10-ounce rainbow trout from Lake Diefenbaker in 2007. That catch sparked online debate over the legitimacy of Lake Diefenbaker’s farm-born, genetically-engineered rainbows. Technically known as triploids, they’re designed with three sets of chromosomes, making them sterile and channeling energies normally spent reproducing towards growth.
In 2007, on a message board of the International Game Fish Association, the angling world’s record- and ethics-keeping body, some fishermen argued that triploids were unnatural, as divorced from the sport’s history as Barry Bonds’ home runs were from Hank Aaron’s.
The IGFA refused to make a distinction between natural and GM fish. Neither would they distinguish between species caught in their traditional waters and those introduced into new, growth-friendly environments, such as largemouth bass whose extra-large ancestors were imported from Florida to California in the 1960s.
But to purists, there was a difference between transplantation and outright manufacture.
The Konrad brothers’ response on the message board was curt: “Stop crying and start fishing.”
Now they’ve caught another record-breaking trout. Or have they?
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