Just as Bison and Wolves were being systematically eliminated from our western states post the Civil War, so too was native Cutthroat Trout....In a fine new book entitled TROUT CULTURE, writer Jen Corrinne Brown provides a sobering tale of us humans going forth with "bumper car" abandon, decimating native Cutthroat fisheries, restocking rivers with non-native fish, exhausting and decimating "natures design"...........Paradoxically, by the time the West was being sold by boosters as a wild, pristine trout-fishing destination, the native trout populations had been decimated and private interests as well as state and federal agencies turned to fish culture (raising fish in hatcheries to be planted in the wild) to replace them....................The first stocking efforts were haphazard............. In some cases young trout, called “fingerlings,” were brought in by the railroads (which benefited from tourism) to be sold cheaply or given away to anyone who wanted a bucketful............By the late 19th century state and federal trout hatcheries had been established throughout the Rockies to keep up with the demand.................Most of the trout stocked were nonnative species: brook trout from the East Coast, brown trout imported from Europe and rainbows from the West Coast............ The indigenous cutthroats didn’t compete well with any of these introduced species and interbred with the rainbows, turning once pure strains of wild fish into mutts............... The theory seemed to be that one trout was as good as another, and rainbows became a favorite of fish culturists because they were the easiest to raise in hatcheries............. By the early 20th century, several subspecies of cutthroats were extinct..............It wasn’t until the rise of the modern environmental movement of the 1960s and ’70s that fishermen began to chafe at the artificiality of their trout fisheries and to belatedly consider the fates of native nongame species like chubs, suckers and pike minnows.......... Until then, these species had often been poisoned by state fish and game agencies to make room for more stocked trout

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Taking the Bait

The Rockies were sold as a pristine

 trout-fishing destination only 

after native populations were decimated.

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Trout Culture

How Fly Fishing Forever

 Changed the

 Rocky Mountain West

JEN CORRINNE BROWN

• 
  
• $35.00S HARDCOVER 
• (9780295994574) 

• PUBLISHED: May 2015
• 
  
• BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION:
•  248 pp., 34 b and w photos, 
• 3 maps, 6 x 9 in.
• 
  
• From beer labels to literary

 classics like A River Runs Through 
It, trout fishing is a beloved feature
 of the iconography of the American
 West. But as Jen Brown demonstrates
 in Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing 
Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain 
West, the popular conception of Rocky 
Mountain trout fishing as a 
quintessential
 experience of communion with nature
 belies the sport's long history of
 environmental manipulation, 
engineering, and, ultimately,
 transformation. 

A fly-fishing enthusiast herself, Brown
 places the rise of recreational trout
 fishing in a local and global context.
 Globally, she shows how the European
 sport of fly-fishing came to be a 
defining, tourist-attracting feature
 of the expanding 19th-century 
American West.

 Locally, she traces 
the way that the burgeoning fly-
fishing tourist industry shaped the
 environmental, economic, and social
 development of the Western United 
States: introducing and stocking 
favored fish species, eradicating 
the less favored native "trash fish," 
changing the courses of waterways,
 and leading to conflicts with Native
Americans' fishing and territorial
 rights. 

Through this analysis, Brown 
demonstrates that the majestic
 trout streams often considered a
 timeless feature of the American
 West are in fact the product of 
countless human interventions 
adding up to a profound 
manipulation of the Rocky 
Mountain environment.

"In wonderfully approachable
prose Jen Corrinne Brown
guides readers through the

 many environmental 

manipulations that were 

needed to create the mountain

 states' renowned trout fisheries.

 In the process, she ties fly-

fishing into the wider history

 of outdoor recreation and

 environmental change in the

 West, giving anyone who loves 

the region or the sport much 

food for thought."

-William Philpott, author of 

Vacationland: Tourism and 

Environment in the Colorado 

High Country

"A truly intriguing argument that
 reshapes our understanding of
the region, its environment, and
culture. Features a wealth of 
original
 research."

-Michael W. Childers, author of
Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts
 and the Environmental Movement

"Jen Corrine Brown's timely and
well-researched Trout Culture
should become a key feature
of the national conversation
 over the ecological, economic,
and recreational future of
western rivers. Whether
we knew it or not, we have
been waiting for this book.
"
-Paul Schullery, author of
Cowboy Trout and If Fish Could 
Scream

"A welcome and clear-eyed
history of Rocky Mountain fly
 fishing,Trout Culture links the
growth of the sport and its
passionate following to western
tourism, and, most importantly,
 to a history of fish management
and environmental change that
 reveals the significant and often
 troubling results of our
 fascination with trout. Fishing
 enthusiasts and western
historians
alike should read this book;
 they
will never look at a trout stream
the same way again."

-Annie Gilbert Coleman,
 University of Notre Dame

FROM THE LEWIS amp; CLARK JOURNALS

"520 kinds of fish"

Provisions in the Corps' on-board larder had dwindled considerably by the time they reached "the forks of the Jefferson." They had but little of their salt meat left, and only a few remnants of the corn they had departed Fort Mandan with. Near Fortunate Camp on August 19, three of hunters bagged two deer, while several of the men caught some nice, large westslope cutthroat trout.

Westslope Cutthroat Trout

Some of the other men, according to Private Whitehouse, "halled the fish net across the river but caught none any other way but with a hook & line." Hook-and-line fishing was mediocre the next day also, and the hunting was worse. On the 22nd, however, their luck changed when the Indians—"verry kind and friendly"—helped them make a fish-drag out of willows. They "tyed bunches of them together and made it long enofe to reach across the River, and Caught with it 520 different kinds of fine pan fish." Obviously he meant 520 fish of different kinds, of such size as two or three would fit nicely in a frying pan. "We divided them with the natives," he continued, and "Gave them a mess of boiled corn which they were fond of."