Last week I highlighted my favorite trout. To be clear, when I say “my favorite trout,” I’m also saying “my favorite fish” — salt or freshwater.
This week, the rest of the best.
Brookies — I’ve caught a handful of brookies through the years, though not too many. Brook trout are eastern trout, introduced to the West as people who’d left their fish behind decided they’d like to bring them along. As far as introduced fish go, they haven’t wreaked the same kind of havoc rainbows have on native cutthroats. The brook trout’s closest relative out West is the bull trout, and when those two species get busy, the offspring are infertile. Rainbows and cutthroats make fertile babies, and hybrids have consequences for biodiversity.
In small streams, brookies are often overpopulated dinks. But in lakes, they can grow fat and sassy and make things interesting at the end of the line. There’s no mistaking the head-shaking fight of a plump brook trout.
By the way, I’m ignoring the distinction between trout and char here. It’s of no meaningful consequence for this discussion.
Arizona natives — I spent six years living in Flagstaff and have a special fondness for Arizona’s unusual natives, Apache and Gila trout. Both fish are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and I’ve only caught Apache trout. There wasn’t an open season for Gilas when I lived there. I caught Apache trout on a small lake on the White Mountain Apache Reservation on a field trip with the Northern Arizona Flycasters club. We camped at the lake and that evening I heard the first wild wolf howl of my life. The Mexican gray wolf reintroduction effort was only a few years old at that point.
While I’ve never caught Gila trout, I did cover the reintroduction of the species to Dude Creek, a small stream near Payson, Arizona. A decade before, a fire had burned through the canyon, and the resulting mud and ash flows wiped out the introduced rainbows that would have hybridized native Gilas. The reintroduced fish were flown into the remote canyon by helicopter. Gilas have recovered sufficiently since then that there is now limited sport fishing for them.
Macks — I’ve caught a couple 10-poundish lake trout and they were magnificent fish. Hauling them up from the depths of Flathead Lake was a workout, and in its own way, fun and interesting. I’ve also played the Mack population-control game, fishing for the smaller lake trout that thrive in the water’s depths, noshing on mysis shrimp. I like that light-tackle fishing even more, though if you reel up those fish too fast their swim bladders balloon, ending the fight. The best thing about those fish is that they challenge the conventional wisdom that lake trout are terrible to eat. Those little lakers, the shrimp eaters, are another matter. Their flesh is the color of a wild cherry Life Savers hard candy and delicious on the grill or smoked. Bigger fish-eating Macks have a bad reputation, but the little ones are tasty.
Cuttbows — I don’t have much to say here other than all the good stuff I said about cutthroats and rainbows last week. My only complaint is that the presence of cuttbows means a watershed is losing its native fish, and that’s a bad thing. Hatcheries have developed widely adaptable strains of rainbow trout that seem able to take over any suitable habitat where they’ve been introduced. Back east, rainbows replace brook trout by outcompeting them. Natives are best in my book, though I never met a trout at the end of my line that I didn’t like.
Steelhead — Sea-run rainbows. I’ve never caught one, but fished for them once in Malibu Creek. Yes, that Malibu. There’s a small, lingering population of steelhead off the Southern California coast.
I’d like to catch a steelhead or two. On Idaho’s Clearwater River, I think.