Brook Trout Fishing Tip Videos

  • Trophy Brook Trout in Newfoundland and Labrador

    Angling guide Gord Robinson chats about fishing for trophy brook trout in Newfoundland and Labrador - the last frontier.

  • Making Your Own Feathered Trebles

    Feathered trebles add flash to any bait that uses treble hooks, here's how to make your own at home.

  • How To: Catch Sea Run Brook Trout

    Redbrook stream in Massachusetts is a unique area where you can fish for Sea Run Brook Trout.

  • Local Flavor: New Hampshire Hatchery

    The New Hampshire State Fish Hatchery in New Hampton, NH is the oldest hatchery in the state, over 100 years old. This facility specializes in raising wild and domesticated strains of Eastern brook trout and brown trout.

  • Love Your Lake: Pearl Lake

    Pearl Lake is nestled in the mountains north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Surrounded by lush forest in the Pearl Lake State Park, the lake offers anglers peace and quiet while they seek to land brook trout, cutthroat trout, graylings and longnose suckers.

  • Love Your Lake: Irvine Lake

    Where can an angler find some great fishing for rainbow, brook, and brown trout, blue and channel catfish, bass, wipers, crappies, bluegill, and sturgeons, in the same body of water? They're all in Irvine Lake, just a few miles east of Anaheim, Calif

  • How To: Live Bait Rigging

    Live bait rigging provides an opportunity to present a natural food source to fish, which ultimately produces more hook ups. Learn how properly rig live bait to present it to fish efficiently.

  • Fish Facts: Speckled Trout

    Joe Street from River's Edge Outfitters demonstrates how to fish for speckled trout.

Fresh Water
Salt Water

Brook Trout Species Identification

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Brook Trout
Eric Engbretson/USFWS

Appearance

The back ranges from green to dark brown or nearly black in color. The sides are of a lighter color with pale spots and small red spots surrounded by bluish circles. The belly color often depends on the sex of the fish, as females can be white to yellow while males tend to have a deep orange or reddish tinge. Colors change dramatically as spawning time approaches. Ocean-going brook trout become silvery and actually lose some of their distinctive colors, although the red spots remain. Brook trout revert back to their original colors when coming back into freshwater.

Maximum Size

Brook trout do not grow as large as other forms of trout, rarely exceeding 7 pounds (3 kg). The largest ever caught remains the oldest angling record in the world: a 14 pound 8 oz (6.57 kg) specimen caught back in 1916. 30-35 inches (76-89 cm) is the max length a brook trout could grow to.

Geographic Range

Brook trout are native to eastern North America, ranging as far north as Hudson Bay, south through higher elevations along the Appalachian Mountains to Georgia, and in the Mississippi River.It is Atlantic Canada's most common trout.

brook trout

Habitat

Brook trouts are mainly a freshwater species that live in small streams, ponds, creeks, and lakes. There are also sea-running trout, spending upwards of three months in the ocean, but never straying too far from shore.

Life Span

5-8 years.

Food

Plankton, insects, snails, clams, and fish.Sea run brook trout eat fish almost exclusively while in salt water.

Spawning

Brook trout spawn in the fall from September to November, usually in streams on gravel. Hatchlings emerge from the gravel the following spring, barely longer than an inch (3 cm).

Predators

Larger fish (northern pike), birds (ospreys, kingfisher, herons, and loons) and mammals (otters, raccoons, and mink).

Information credit: Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Brook Trout Fishing Tips

Urban Fishing, Small streams

I know not another urban fishing blog, but lets face it most of us live in an urban environment.  When most people think of urban fishing its usually a city park pond or city reservoir.  If you look hard enough there are always other options. Many of the cities and towns here in Colorado have multiple small streams and creeks flowing into them or through them.  Because of their

Hitting early season Small Streams

I love fishing small streams and with the weather we’ve had this year I was hopeful they would be opening up early.  So Friday I got off work early and headed out to some local BLM land that has a great small stream on it just to check it out and see if it was even fishable yet. After the longer then I remember because I’m still pretty out of shape hike I spotted the stream

Fly Fishing for Beginners

By LOY MILAM              My first introduction to fly fishing (if you could truly characterize it as “fly fishing”) was in the late 1950s growing up in my hometown of Lubbock, Texas. By chance I stumbled upon an interesting package at the local Army Surplus store which read on the package “Survival Kit.” It

Brook Trout Photo Galleries

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