I was only joking about the closed seasons for hunting, but making the argument from the other side. You can always just say....why bother. I still stand by my post on the last page. In fact, not having an opening day and allowing the stocked fish to survive longer in the rivers and ponds may have an adverse impact to the community.

There are many examples of accidental hatchery releases into small streams and larger creeks that basically eliminated the entire forage base resulting in the eventual collapse of the fish communities in those streams.

When you stock fish at numbers that are un-natural regardless of whether you do it all at once or in smaller droves, you're going to impact the community if you aren't removing them. IMO, if removing opening day would have the reduction of fishermen as people seem to believe and if I was a DEP biologist in charge of stocking and they did away with opening day, I would reduce the number of fish I stocked during the year, big time.