Heres an example of how much more agressive the less abundant early wild fish are verses hatchery.

Last year about this time the bogie was loaded with brats, it was a normal day to bring 20 brats to hand in the dimmel drift.

I was fishing with a freind and I hooked about a 14# wild buck. We got it to the boat and just as we were gonna cut the leader the line broke and the fish took my whole rig from rag to lead.

Well the next day my friend went back to the dimmel drift and caught the same fish on a plug. He knew it for sure because my pink rag was still in his mouth.

Out of the literally thousands of hatchery fish in the hole his boat catches the same wild fish for the second day in a row. Luckly he caught it and the fish was released for the second time. Who knows if the fish stuck around and was caught agian or not.

How many of these early wild fish make it through the gauntlet without biteing or are caught by the greatly outnumbered guys who will CNR them.