A new report by the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation demonstrates that by any measure America's hunters and anglers are among the most prominent and influential of all demographic groups.

Cats for Dead Horse

They might not be catchable size when first placed into Lynx and Fain lakes, but next summer should prove to be a boon for trout angling enthusiasts.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department announced Thursday, Sept 27 that Tonto Creek Hatchery is providing 30,000, five-inch surplus brook trout for the two Prescott area lakes.

“They’re still small,” said AZG&F fisheries biologist Andy Clark,  “but fishing at these two lakes by next summer should provide a bounty for anglers.”

The target numbers are for 20,000 of the fish to be delivered to Lynx and the other 10,000 to Fain. Stocking the lakes began on Wednesday, Sept 26.

Brook trout tend to feed closer to the bottom, so Clark suggests using worms or Power Bait during the 2008 summer fishing season.

In addition to the brook trout, Dead Horse Ranch State Park will receive 750 pounds of channel catfish on Wednesday. The catfish will average about two pounds. Clark recommends using hot dogs, night crawlers, mealworms, and dip baits for the catfish.

For a statewide fishing report, log on to the Game and Fish Department's web site at azgfd.gov.

ILLUSTRATION by Brian Lemke

For many years my dad and I enjoyed world class flyfishing for trout in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Montana. Wearing cowboy hats, fishing vests and neoprene waders, clutching split bamboo ultra-light rods, we cast artificial flies across countless blue ribbon trout streams and crystal clear lakes. We camped out under the stars, rose before dawn and labored up steep mountainsides through frigid alpine air to fish in remote beaver ponds. We even risked drowning by wading in dangerously deep rivers, water lapping against our chins, just so we could better position ourselves to drop a midge the size of an exclamation point smack dab on the nose of a feeding fish. We hooked, fought, netted and released thousands of brooks, rainbows, browns and cutthroats, all brilliantly colored wild trout, thick as thieves and twice as slippery.

Laboratory results for trout routinely sampled at Lees Ferry by Arizona Game and Fish Department biologists this spring came back positive for whirling disease on Wednesday, June 13, marking the first time this disease has been documented in wild fish in Arizona public waters.

Whirling disease is a parasitic infection of trout. It gets its name because the parasite infiltrates the head and spinal cartilage of small fingerling trout and can cause the fish to swim erratically (whirl). More information on the disease can be obtained from the Whirling Disease Foundation at www. whirling-disease.org or at http://www.whirlingdisease.montana.edu/.