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.
https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKMwEkKj9jg