The negative effects of hatchery trout on a fishery are well-documented, and protecting self-sustaining trout fisheries is the cornerstone of organizations like Trout Unlimited. The White is now stocked--According to Arkansas Game and Fish figure--with more than one million hatchery rainbows per yea--10,000 fish per river mile over the approximate 100 miles of trout holding water. This is four times the number stocked in the early '70s.

Anglers can take multiple stocked rainbows as part of their legal limit. Thankfully, they do. But the sheer numbers of hatchery trout year after year are doing textbook damage to the river. To quote Montana fisheries biologist Dick Vincent, "When you stock fish, you stock the size you want to catch. The hatchery fish suppress wild fish that would grow larger. But the hatchery fish don't live long enough to grow big."

For years I've floated the White during nonhydro-generation periods. I've spent more time spotting fish, visible during low water, than fishing. Sections of the river that contained scores of browns to 30 pounds ten years ago now have a dozen trout weighing up to five pounds.

Not all the browns are gone, but the decline has accelerated in the last four years. These same areas are now inhabited year-round by redhorse suckers in numbers and sizes not seen since the river was dammed in the '50s. Ten-inch hatchery rainbows are milling around everywhere. All this in a river that has a population of spawning and reproducing browns that previously grew to world-class size.

To date, attempts to limit hatchery stocking on the White have been unpopular. Hatcheries are viewed as the total solutions, not as single tools. Locals dock owners and chambers of commerce brag about stocking numbers. Bird watchers observe, accurately, recent increases of osprey, bald eagle, and other bird populations. Blue herons on my property are so well fed I can almost chase down adults and catch them by hand. (Any catch would be released immediately, unharmed.) They all benefit from the hatchery tonnage. Hatchery operations, both on a state and federal level, support jobs. They are politically sensitive and, for now, untouchable.

As on the Battenkill, all the reasons for the declining White River are not known. But a major source of the White's problem increases every time the hatchery truck makes its deliveries.

Bob Heine
Cotter, Arkansas