The Unicorn of CT Wild Trout

There are plenty of wild brown trout and brook trout in CT. In a few streams there are healthy populations of wild rainbows, and every now and then they can be caught in other streams. I've bumped into a handful on the Farmington and the first year I fished my home river there seemed to be an unusual number of three to five inch bows, enough that I would catch as many as three of them on some days. Wild bows are certainly a rarity, but the real unicorn of the CT wild trout family is the tiger trout. The only other trout that could possibly be in CT that would be rarer would be a laker.

I have been lucky enough to witness four wild tiger trout coming to hand, two caught by myself and two caught by other anglers. The first was six years ago, a beautiful specimen caught by my long time friend Dalton on a small Panther Martin spinner. The next to were caught by myself in 2014 in my home river. The fourth was today, caught by my friend Noah.

Noah is just getting into fly fishing and being in the "know" I was more then will to help him begin learning the ways of fly fishing for trout. We went to one of my favorite rivers and got rigged up with nymphs. I pointed him to a good run and told him how he should fish it and then began working my way downstream. Suddenly I heard Noah yelling and looked up to see his rod bent over. As I started back up he shouted down to me "its a tiger!". When I saw it I couldn't believe my eyes, it was indeed a perfect little wild tiger trout. Noah's first ever fish on the fly. After that the rest of the day was pretty anticlimactic!