Native Trout

A native brook trout stream in Minnesota.  This tiny spring creek was likely only spared brown trout infestation because of its size.  Somehow, fish have hung on here for hundreds of years.  

I have spent a lot of my time fishing for brown trout.  I started fly fishing in Minnesota where most streams or creeks that would historically have brook trout are now brown trout fisheries.  Only once in 6 years did I ever catch a brook trout in a stream where brown trout were abundant.  There are remnant populations of native brook trout and also newly resorted streams with stocked but wild brook trout but most of the trout or cold water habitat in Minnesota and the rest of the drift less region has been overrun with brown trout.  Mostly due to the water quality and slightly warmer than historical temperatures brook trout are no longer suited to survive in the drift less area streams and creeks.  At least, that's what the DNR and TU says.  My feeling is there is a lot of habitat that is good enough for brook trout but brown trout are a more desirable sport fish.  Since brook trout and brown trout both spawn in the fall there is a greater likelihood of interspecies competition for spawning beds.  A similar situation exists out west where the introduction of rainbow trout to cutthroat habitat has lead to a reduction in cutthroat numbers.  Each of these unnaturally cohabitating species can interbreed creating tiger trout in the case of a brook trout/brown trout cross and a cutbow in the case of a rainbow/cutthroat cross.   However, the tiger trout is sterile and the cutbow is fertile which makes introduction of rainbow trout to cutthroat habitat more damaging due to  genetic pollution of the native cutthroat population.  

A Native Minnesota brook trout

Heavily camouflaged brook trout.  Even the orange belly is hidden behind black pigment.  

All over the country in all types of water there are non-native species decimating native fish populations and it's all our fault.  We move fish from waterway to water way for many reasons.  Sometimes it is a handful of ignorant people who do the damage, like whomever put lake trout in Lake Yellowstone, and sometimes its the government  who imported brown trout from europe in the 1800's which lead to the decimation of countless brook trout populations nation wide.   My problem is that no one even knows what their local stream was like before we messed it up.  I live in Fort Collins, Colorado now and mostly fish the Cache de la Poudre river.  At one point, there were nothing but green back cutthroat trout in the Poudre as well as all other eastern slope streams like the Big Thompson, the South Platte and even the Arkansas.  Green back now occupy less than one percent of their native range.   Their once immaculate habitat invaded by rainbow and brown trout, damed and diverted into vestige of what it once was.   I often wonder what it must have been like before the front range grew to the point that mother nature needed some rearrangement to accommodate all the inhabitants.  I also realize I am part of the problem.  I moved here from Minnesota for many of the same reasons people from all over the country find the front range so appealing.  Ironically, it's the outdoor recreation opportunities that make Colorado so great.  For all the damage rainbow and brown trout have done to native fish I still enjoy catching them.  I felt like I needed a little more appreciation for brown trout.  Even though I scorn them for not even being native to this continent I feel like they have a place here now.  They entertain millions of anglers and are likely better suited to some of our warming and changing river ecosystems.  I decided I needed to see brown trout in their native habitat to better appreciate the species that has given me so much enjoyment and caused so much harm to our environment.   I recently got back from fishing the Bocq river in the south of Belgium where I was surprised to find the habitat was eerily similar to where brown trout thrive in Minnesota.