Making a Big Splash

HEADNOTE

VIEWPOINT

HEADNOTE

Trout fishing reels in big bucks for government at all levels.

Izaak Walton was to the art of fishing

what John Maynard Keynes was to modern economics. Caught in the muse, Walton contemplated the value of angling in his book The Compleat Angler, saying that "It will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself." Fishing's great apostle knew what recompense could come, if only measured by an intangible pension.

But the economic benefits of angling are tangible-and quite measurable. A recent peer-reviewed study conducted by James Caudill, an economist at the Fish and Wildlife Service, shows that fishing for iainbow trout produced by the National Fish Hatchery System sends ripples through economies, making a splash in the tills of businesses and government. Simply put, fishing for rainbow trout reels in big bucks. ;