What Brook Trout are Supposed to do

 From late 2015 through the end of fall 2017, all of those who fish for, observe, and study wild brook trout in Southern New England got to see what these fish can do under severe pressure. It wasn't pretty, and I wish it on no wild trout population, but it was eye opening to see just how much they could put up with. It wasn't sustainable though: I think 3 more 2016's would have caused irreversible damage. Now, in late 2018, we get to see what happens to a wild brook trout when everything is in their favor. I've fished these streams for six, seven years now. This fall I'm seeing things I've never seen before.

This fish is not underfed.

By the time the foliage has peaked and is on it's way downhill, there are two things I have come to expect: leaf clogged pools and skinny brook trout. Summers weren't conducive for heavy feeding, which can increase spawning and heavy freeze mortality. Pools being leaf clogged due to the low and slow water probably wasn't too destructive and even provided ample cover, though in some places they undoubtedly smothered what could have been good spawning gravel. Though far less than a third of the leaves have dropped so far I don't see that problem manifesting itself this year given how good the flows are. Skinny fish is also a problem I'm not seeing, which is no wonder. There were serious blow outs through September, and that undoubtedly put a lot of  biomass in the drift. I've been catching brookies that are heftier than ones I've caught at any other time of year with the exception of  the early-mid spring feeding binge. I suspect the same variables have resulted in faster growth rates this season as well because the number of "big" brookies I caught in the spots I fished this week far exceeded what I'd seen in them ever before. This is what brook trout do when they are given the right circumstances, and this is what we should be striving to maintain or improve: thriving fish, not just surviving fish. This is what brook trout are supposed to do.

 

Another advantage of high flows is the tendency for fish to move around in it. I saw them in the act last fall after a late October rain. Brookies were attempting to leap a waterfall that the most certainly wouldn't clear. It was a show of these fish's incredible urge to populate new water, a very advantageous trait for a fish that requires a fairly narrow water temperature and dissolved oxygen content to survive. One spot that ended up being very productive on Friday afternoon is one I have fished more than a dozen times and never once seen or caught a brook trout. I visit it mostly hoping to get a chance at larger redfin pickerel, but I've always hoped that one day I'd find that a pod of brookies had moved into that water. On this day I got lucky.

I think the best piece of advice I can give to anyone trout fishing right now in Southern New England is to get it while its good, and don't expect the pattern to match with recent years. A lot has changed in my local water and this area hasn't seen anything different from anywhere else in the region. Expect the unexpected, look in areas there maybe weren't fish last year or the year before, and I think this fall, winter, and spring may be the best six months in the last four years to pick out some big small stream wild brookies and browns, maybe even the fish of a lifetime. This isn't the time to sit around at home wishing it was warm out.

Fall is well underway. In fact, at this point it feels like the end is really in sight. I've got so much I want to do in a tiny little window of time, so forgive me if posts end up being a little late like this one. In the end it isn't what I intended to write when I started on Friday, but I think it may have ended up being more informative. Maybe.