The subject of stocking Peacock Bass presents the opportunity to explore two concepts. The first is being innovative and the second is being irresponsible. It seems like there might be a fine line between these two concepts but there really isn�t.
The difference between innovative and irresponsible is who pays when everything goes horribly wrong.
We sent up a space shuttle when it was too cold. We�d had so many successes that no one was thinking about the possibility of failure. None of us think we�re going to have an accident, fire or illness in the family but we spend good money for insurance just in case.
There is a popular fishing program that ends with the statement �remember, we all live down stream�. While we might live down stream, few of us have lakes that are down stream. If you look at all the posts everywhere, you will see that we tend not to think about someone upstream from us introducing species that would destroy our fisheries.
Like the space shuttle, we might go a number of times stocking Peacock Bass without any problems. However, who�s going to pay for that one time that Peacock Bass establish and start to destroy a native sport fishery. If something like that happened, who here would be willing to stand up and say �I did it and I will sell off everything I have to help pay for the damages I caused�? If you�re not willing to do this, then you�re being irresponsible rather than innovated.
