The North American continent is totally infested with species that were not originally native here. Just because a species isn't native does not mean that it is bad for our environment. Many of our most common species of fish were not native. They were brought here by immigrants and released with the hope and intention that they would thrive.
When you think about bugs that have been introduced most think of the bad without realizing that Honey bees were not native and many of the plants that the first immigrants planted would not bear fruit without them. Horses and cattle were "imported". Many of our fruit trees are not native and would not have survived here in the early days without the bees.
I would love to be able to catch an arapaima!!! Other than the Aligator gar there are not many freshwater species in America that might offer the sort of challenge that those fish will offer. They are actually very similar to the alligator gar in that they are partially air breathers. They grow to similar sizes and from what I understand would feed in similar areas to the gar. I like fishing for gar. My best so far was just less than 6 feet long. The only thing that I have caught that was bigger was a hammerhead shark.
Our freshwater environment is not even slightly natural. To even try to make it into a natural ecological system would require us the tear down the dams and STOP using our rivers like a toilet to dispose of our chemical waste. That isn't going to happen so allow the sports fishermen to have what they like in our not-so-natural freshwaters.
It is amazing how seldom introduced species actually survive in the long term. Most freshwater fish are highly evolved to a very specific environment. There are a few that are very adaptable but most require a rather specific temperature range and have a very specific food species that they are adept at catching.
Trout are a good example. They are beautiful fish and I have heard that they are good to eat. Unfortunately, I have never caught one nor eaten any. They can't survive the summers in the south. It is very possible that this fish will only be able to survive in the southern parts of Florida. I don't think that the places where they are native have much in the way of winters.
Nowadays it seems that a lot of our ecology nuts are unable to understand that the natural ecologies are long gone. They try to balance a broken system by not allowing new changes but after the barn has burned down is not the time to make rules about what you can have in the barn. You need to build a NEW barn, not make rules about the use of the old barn. There have been mistakes made. I understand that but those mistakes in the past were made by politicians on advice from people more interested in a fast answer than a studied opinion made after understanding the problem.
A lake near me became infested with a weed that is or WAS common for use in aquariums. The lake was smothered and you could not even run a boat in it. SOOOO they imported a fish that ate that specific plant. It was great they cleaned out that lake in just a few years. They also wiped out all other plant life in the lake and that killed off the small fish that needed that as a food source. Soon we had a 45,000-acre DEAD lake that had to be drained and then started from scratch. It is now once again a great place to fish, camp and water ski. They learned not to ask the local realtors for lake management advice.
Most of the reservoirs created by damming rivers are more like a giant aquarium than any sort of natural lake. The deep waters are not what you normally would find in that area so they add species like stripers to it. I have fished in lakes that had been stocked with fish that are normally thought of as saltwater species but they lived in the fairly fresh inshore bays and river mouths and so could live but not reproduce in freshwater. Even the lakes that you think of as being "natural" are regularly stocked with fingerlings of the primary sport species to improve the numbers above what would be natural.
