Word: fishly
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...Suddenly a form rose from below and took the hook. As Duncan played in his leaping, twisting catch, he could tell by its green back, silvery sides and blazing red stripe that he had hooked a rainbow trout. Then Duncan saw something else: a jet-black discoloration on the fish's tail and rear section. The trout was clearly diseased. "I was shocked," says the veteran sport fisherman. "You don't expect such a sight out in the remote wilds...
Duncan was lucky; he caught and released several more fish that afternoon. Other trout aficionados will make the pilgrimage to Colorado's and Montana's world-renowned wild-trout streams this fishing season and come away skunked. The cause: the tail-blackening "whirling disease," a mysterious and usually fatal ailment that is spreading rapidly through prized trout populations of the Rocky Mountain West. In Colorado, where the rainbow is the mainstay of a $1 billion-a-year game-fishing industry, the disease has infected hatcheries, devastated trout on a prime stretch of the Colorado River and spilled into...
This much is known: the disease is carried by a microscopic protozoan called Myxobolus cerebralis, whose spores are released when infected fish die. These spores are not in themselves harmful to trout. It is only after they have been ingested by inch-long Tubifex worms in the mud that the parasites become dangerous. In the worm's gut, the protozoan takes a new form: grappling-hook-shaped spore cases that when released from the worm, can invade the gills and skin of tiny rainbow fry. The infection eats away at the cartilage of young trout, leaving them deformed, discolored...
Fishermen themselves may have helped spread the disease. More than 80% of the trout caught in Colorado come from hatcheries, and although many of the state's hatcheries are known to be infected, the Division of Wildlife continues to pour its fish into Colorado streams to help maintain what it calls the angler-satisfaction rate. Montana, however, does not stock its streams; authorities suspect the Madison may have become infested when some angler unwittingly dumped infected rainbows into it. The spores can also be carried from stream to stream by boats, outboard motors and even mud on the soles...
DIED. JOSEPH MITCHELL, 87, writer and journalist; in New York City. In prose both vivid and wry, Mitchell, a New Yorker regular for most of his career, chronicled the city's more unconventional citizens, from workers at the Fulton Fish Market to the Mohawk Indians who toiled as high-altitude construction crews. In 1992 he capped his career with the best-selling Up in the Old Hotel, a compilation of four previous books, including the memorable McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, with its cockeyed gallery of barkeeps, preachers and gypsies...