A Day in Trout County

Yesterday (1 April) was the opening day of New York's stream trout fishing season. Some family members and I went to a couple of small streams in a neighboring county.

The first place was purported to be a naturally reproducing Brook Trout stream. We didn't catch any Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), but my father- and sister-in-law caught a few chubs. The difficulty of the fishing (it was very brushy along the banks) led us to move to another creek in the northern part of the county.

The second creek we visited was almost perfect. It traversed a large plain in a one of the area's major river valleys. The creek contained both wild Brown Trout (Salmo trutta var. fario) and our native Brook Trout. We didn't fish here for long because the weather was poor. Nonetheless, my father- and sister-in-law each caught a beautiful Brown Trout. I wasn't able to get a photograph, but the picture below gives you an idea of how beautiful they were. Still, even this picture does not do the fish justice. In addition to bright red spotting, they had bright red edging on their pectoral, pelvic, and caudal fins. Their ventral fins had bright white edging lined with red.