I don't write the news. I don't make things up. I do report news. I do give my opinions and input when I think they can be helpful. I hope this is one of those times.
This might sound like a "fish story", but .....
It's all true. The exact dates and parties involved are debatable, but this actually happened. I remember it. (I welcome the opportunity to have the details corrected, please.)
Back in the early 70's, a group (including my late father) got together and decided our Flow should be a trout lake. So, they dumped poison into our Flow, and killed off nearly all the native species. Yup, not joking. The apparent main objective of this (IMHO) fool's errand was to kill the bass, because bass eat trout, and those folks wanted trout.
Fast forward one whole year, and the bass were back in even greater numbers in our Flow. This happened because NYS was attempting to seed some mountain pond with bass, but mistook our Flow for the pond they wanted to seed, and NYS ended up dumping hundreds of bass into our Flow -- by aircraft. Yup, not joking. Oh, the Joy of having been on our Flow for almost 60 years now (not consecutive).
This past October, our Flow literally stank from one end to the other of rotting fish. The DEC officer I heard from indicated they believe the dead fish were part of the $6,500 trout the board had re-stocked our Flow with once again this past Spring. They believe (correctly,IMHO) that our Flow is simply too shallow and therefore too warm to support trout, which is why trout were never a dominant native species in our Flow. Many of the trout we paid for again this year apparently eventually perished, and caused our Flow to stink like I have never experienced previously.
The board claims we have been paying for re-stocking our Flow with trout for 30 years. My records indicate it is closer to 50 years. But, for the sake of discussion, let's assume 30 years is correct. My question is this:
𝑨𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 30 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔, 𝒘𝒉𝒚 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒖𝒑 𝒕𝒐 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒃𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒕??
I asked this same question at the 2020 AGM, but no one knew the answer, and none was provided after.
I urge the currently sitting board in the strongest language possible to suspend the $6,500 planned annual expenditure for 2020 and beyond until an investigation can be undertaken, and it can be determined why we don't have hundreds if not thousands of naturally reproduced trout, as well as why so many of them apparently so noxiously perished earlier this Autumn. Thank you.