What do stocked trout do after the truck leaves?

They mill, then they scatter. For the first days after stocking, hatchery rainbows hang in a confused crowd near the release point — no feeding lanes, no predator map, pellet-trained — which is why the stocking site produces absurdly well for a week and why that fishing feels the way it does. Telemetry studies then show steady dispersal: within two to four weeks fish have strung out along hundreds of meters (up to a quarter mile-plus) of shoreline or stream, settling into the best habitat they can hold against resident fish. Survivors grow warier and more wild-mannered by the month. So fish the stocking point early, and fish the good habitat — depth, cover, inflows — once the crowd thins.

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