Plenty of fly fishermen believe the likes of GPS units, Google Earth, online mapping and tell-all fly fishing sites have let some of the adventurous air out of fly fishing, but for California meat hunters anglers for whom chasing the hatchery truck is just too much work, we offer up the California Fish & Game fish stocking Web site (found via Alert Underground Reader Tom):

The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has unveiled a new feature on its Web site that allows anglers to better scout out prime trout fishing spots. The new “Map It” feature at www.dfg.ca.gov/fish/Hatcheries/FishPlanting links the weekly trout stocking schedule for bodies of water throughout the state to Google Maps, providing directions and other pertinent info to anglers who are planning fishing trips.

“The scheduled fish plant pages are now receiving more hits than any other section of our Web site,” said Walt Beer, DFG’s Statewide Hatchery Coordinator. “This is proving to be a wonderful one-stop planning tool for anglers who want to maximize their chances for a good day of fishing.”

Beer added that numerous anglers have emailed DFG to praise the addition of the “Map It” feature, such as one Visalia resident who wrote, “What a great idea!”

Basically, when you want a livery, pellet-fed trout dumb enough to eat the rocks in the stream – and you want it right now (and you want turn-by-turn directions, and maybe photographs, and maybe stocking times to the minute) – there’s a place on the Internet just for you.

This, we guess, signals the end of a hallowed bit of fishing heritage; the line of smoking, beat-up, duct-taped vehicles following the hatchery truck from hole to hole.

Internet pundit Nicholas Carr famously asked if Google was making us stupid, and while the question’s still out on that one, we suggest the Internet almost certainly is making us lazier (at least those of us looking to “maximize their chances for a good day of fishing”).

At first, this seemed proof of the coming fly fishing apocalypse, but then again, the sooner we get the rubber trout away from the wild ones, the happier everyone will be.

In that vein, we offer that Web address one more time: The California Fish & Game fish stocking page.

See you waiting for the truck, Tom Chandler.