Annals of Enormity–Frankenfish: Americans, it seems, just want everything to keep getting bigger: cars, homes, steaks, breasts…even the fish they catch. And out in California–according to the LA Times–anglers are hauling in whopping big lake trout. Predictably, these trout, which weigh close to 30 pounds and are dropping state records with depressing regularity, are not freaks of nature. Instead, they are freaks of man, genetically engineered at a California trout farm to raise the self-esteem of lame anglers who believe size is everything. The extra-large, extra-wide fish are the spawn of a mad genius named Phil Mackey, who zaps dividing trout eggs to produce an extra set of chromosomes, which renders the fish sterile. That in turn, means trout that grow faster and bigger because they are not wasting time and energy chasing after girlie trout (hmmm, what does that say about all the couch potatos out there….). Unfortunately, it also means that they are way too big for their fins and extremely sluggish. In short, they are not much in the way of game fish. That doesn’t seem to deter plenty of record-seeking fisher-losers from paying to get a chance to land one. But it drives traditional anglers like Ralph Cutter to spew contempt. “The angler who proudly boasts his conquest over a ‘Frankenfish’ is the wet equivalent of the great white hunter who shoots a Siberian tiger from the back of a pickup on a Texas game farm,” he says. The frankenfish are sterile so they can’t corrupt natural species. But in addition to the fact that this kind of shit only convinces penile enlargement spammers that there is a vast and willing audience out there in America, some how, some way, this warped genetic experiment is going to go very, very wrong (though if Mackey could engineer his Schwarzenn-trout so that eating them would render the angler equally sterile, it might pose a pretty interesting trade-off). Say, Phil…….



Test-Tube Trout: “It’s not my fault I’m so obese. I never knew my mother, I can’t get laid, and I’m genetically predisposed to Super Size my fries….”

(Photo: Robert Gauthier/LA Times)