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Now it's a state park that requires a $10 entry fee that Dave and I hand over to a bundled-up park ranger. We walk upstream, following the smooth-flowing creek, which springs clear and cold from the ground in the heart of the park and empties into the Great South Bay on the south shore of the island. With every step we move farther into the evergreens, disremembering the pavement and the sound of the highways. There are deer, lots of them, all pigeon-tame and not a bit scared of us as they trot up looking for handouts (we had none, only woolly buggers and flyrods). Only later would we realize that this was a foreshadowing of what lay ahead.

We arrive at our beats, which are marked with numbered wooden casting platforms (wading is not allowed on the upper part of the river). From my platform, I see five fish finning in the clear water, unfazed by my shadow and noisy footsteps. With flyfishing, it always pays to try the least complicated method first, so I drop a white streamer into the water. A 12-inch brook trout nails it and splashes around on the surface as I pull it in. To my surprise, a dozen more fish shoot out from under the platform toward the commotion. It's as if this one fish had something all the other fish wanted. Or more precisely, it's just like feeding time at the hatchery.

Dave and I catch fish after fish with our streamers, all brookies, all the same size. After less than a half-hour into our fourhour time slot, we quit, both left with the feeling that we wanted something more real, more gratifying. On our slow walk back to the car, we pass angler after angler going through the rote motions of catching "rubber trout": dunking, hooking, landing, releasing.

One could make an argument (and probably be correct) that stocking trout is a necessary evil on the Connetquot River, a place that roughly 11 million people have ready access to. But it struck me that although this may have been Long Island, it was a scene that is played out all over the country-our rivers packed to the gills with hatchery-reared fish and the fishermen who love them. It also struck me that this is a system that needs some rethinking. After all, the state of Montana stopped stocking trout in its rivers in the mid-1970s, and no one is complaining about the fishing there.

The Hatchery Habit: if you asked the average angler where fish come from, there's a better-than-average chance that he'd reply "the hatchery." And in many cases, he'd be correct. According to fisheries biologist John Epifanio, ., 369 stateoperated cold-water fish hatcheries stocked more than 50 million trout in . waters in 1997 An additional million were stocked by federal hatcheries, according to the . Fish and Wildlife Service, and there is no way of counting how many fish the more than 1000 private hatcheries generate.

Traditional reasoning is that more fish planted means more fishing, right? Maybe. But is there a cost to our fisheries?

As it turns out, the answer is yes. There is a hazardous side to stocking, especially when it comes to salmonids (trout, char and salmon). A 1997 Trout Unlimited report, titled "Fishing for Answers: Status and Trends for Coldwater Management in Colorado," echos the conclusions found in The Uses and Effects of Cultured Fishes (an American Fisheries Society publication), "An Environmental Study on the Culture and Stocking of Trout in California" (a 1996 CalPoly State University-San Luis Obispo study) and the findings of fisheries biologists from around the world: Hatchery fish can wreak havoc on wild populations, displacing natives (greenback cutthroats in Colorado and brook trout in the southern Appalachians) and interbreeding (which muddles genetic strains). And stocked fish can carry and transmit pathogens, such as whirling disease in Colorado, which infect wild populations, sometimes even destroying them.

A well-stocked stream can also give a false sense of security, obfuscating other important issues, like habitat degradation and water quality. There are still lots of fish here; what could possibly be wrong with this stream?

But even more than that, what bothered me on that day on Long Island was this: Fishing for me (and I suspect for many others) is a sport. It is about wildness and challenge and man interacting with an ecosystem in balance. Inherently, it serves as an antithesis to our culture of immediate payoff. We fish to get away from the totems of instant gratification: cell phones, television, fast food. But trout dumped into a river from the back of a hatchery truck, stacked fin-to-fin, is unnatural, and it's certainly not challenging.

Fishing for Dollars: Is stocking what anglers want? Does it make money for the state? Answers: No. A Colorado State University study released last February suggests that it would be economically more efficient for states to stock fewer fish, contradicting the age-old argument that more stocking equals more licenses sold, thus more dollars generated. A report by the California advocacy group CalTrout contends that stocking trout is 10 times more expensive than managing wild trout habitat. "in the long run, not stocking is cheaper," says Peter Rafle, a TU spokesman. "Mother Nature does a much better job at reproducing and balancing fish populations than we ever will."

But what about the hordes of anglers who show up on the Connetquot and all over the country to catch rubber trout? The same survey concluded that what anglers really want are natural settings, solitude and bigger-not more-fish. The folks who follow the hatchery trucks like lawyers after an ambulance are only products of a system that has intrinsic problems. Is continuously providing stocked fish akin to doling out methadone to junkies? If so, the only way to stop the habit is to stop stocking.

Going Native: Of course, stocking is not without its virtues, especially when it's used to reintroduce nearly extinct species or supplement severely reduced stocks. Without stocking, there would be no trout in South America or New Zealand or in many streams in the United States. Even some stocking that's done purely for recreational purposes certainly has its place. "One thing we need is to have catchable fish to get people interested in the sport," says Eddie Kochman, state aquatic manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. "Wild trout are great, but you're not going to recruit young kids in a catch-and-release area." About 60 percent of the stocking in Colorado is done in waters where reproduction is impossible, adds Kochman.

But in waters where natural reproduction makes it possible to have a viable population of wild or native trout-many places on both the East and West coasts and even the Connetquot (which has had a hatchery since the 1860s)-perhaps it's time to let nature take its course.

There is strong evidence that stopping stocking may actually improve fishing. In the late 1970s, Pennsylvania!s Spring Creek was poisoned by the industrial pollutants Kepone and Mirex, and the state stopped stocking and instituted a catch-and-release policy (so no one would eat the fish). The creek was basically left for dead. But instead of dying, wild browns reproduced on their own, and the stream was reborn. Now there are more fish in Spring Creek than before, and the fishing, by all accounts, is better, benefiting anglers, tackle shops and the state.

In Wisconsin, the stocking program in the southwestern part of the state has been slowly phased out over the past 10 years. The result? Waters like the Kickapoo River and Coon Creek are flourishing, inhabited by wild brookies and browns. "This is a huge success story," says Ken Wright of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. "When we stocked fish, 97 percent of them would be gone the next year. Now they're sticking around and reproducing."

But perhaps the biggest success story is Montana. The state stopped stocking its streams in 1974 after a study by fish biologist Richard Vincent concluded that stocking on the Madison River had a negative impact on wild populations. The decision was criticized by many, but the state went through with it, putting more money into improving habitat, "Montana's highest concern," says Vincent. Sixteen years later, it's hard to argue with the results: bigger fish (15- to 16-inch wild fish versus 10- to 12-inch stockies), better habitat and possibly the best trout fishing in the world. Granted not every state in the country has Montana's vast natural resources, but its mantra should be repeated everywhere: If we take care of our fish, the fishing will take care of itself.

So it all boils down to a question that all fishermen (and taxpayers) must ask themselves: Are we interested in the quality of the experience-in good habitat and some characteristic of wildness? Or do we want to catch fish on every cast? Even guys who fish for the pan know that wild trout taste better than bland hatchery fish. And what is more satisfying: to fool a big, wild brown trout or to grease a Muddler Minnow to look like a food pellet and catch stocked fish after stocked fish?

The answer was pretty clear to me that day on the Connetquot. Fish management agencies should focus on habitat, not hatcheries; on sport, not volume. The millions of dollars saved could be used for habitat restoration and preservation and water quality. After all, we'll always be able to breed trout in hatcheries. But what really needs protecting is the environment in which healthy, strong wild fish can live and prosper.