Nymphing and Wild Trout.

[jfetkin]

A wild trout is spawned in the river. from egg, milt. To me,,Imo, Thats a wild fish.

[Clema74]

for me importants things with wild (we don't have many stocked here):
- quite approach (last week end a big one ran away while I was 10m in her back, just because of a little noise stepping a little stone)
- perfect presentation... if you make drag one time, you can wait a while and change you pattern because they've got it in teh memory as strange for hours)
- good imitation of what they're eating right now... except if they are "out" and hungry...

here if you make a noise in the water while approach they go in the bottom and don't move for a while...

wild are tough!!!! so good but so tough!

[sholgate]

[quote author=Silver Creek link=topic=4420.msg34913#msg34913 date=1273870358]
[quote author=sholgate link=topic=4420.msg34745#msg34745 date=1273357941]
I have changed my mind, and maybe you agree or disagree, but now I believe there are wild trout just about everywhere but are rarely fooled.

Any thoughts?
[/quote]

I think one needs to define terms because I'm not sure everyone agrees what a "wild" trout is.

Do you mean trout that hatched from eggs actually spawned in the river? Or perhaps planted fingerlings or cookie cutters who have overwintered and gone "native"?


[/quote]

There are very few fingerling stocked in PA anymore. Even more rare to put them in "put'n takes". And several streams that I was surprised by populations of wild browns are not stocked at all. Unless a fish is held over multiple years, I believe most are easily ID.

[Davyfly]

I would say this guys.
Unless a fish shows some obvious fin damage, (all be it a adult fish ) which may be small such as some distortion on the pecs, tail or dorsal. it is very difficult to determine if a fish was stream born or introduced at some time, if the fish shows perfect fin conformation.
Most of the fin damage takes place when the trout are very small, fingerlings in hatchery systems and will never repair with age as would a perfect fin show.
It would be very unusual for stream born fish to show imperfect fin definition.

Brown trout stockers may be easy for a short while but they will wise up in hurry and more or less act as a true stream born fish, its the very nature of the species.
Many of the 20 to 30 lb fish we see here caught on the White were stocked trout all be it they are in the age class of at least 10 to 15 years to attain those weights.
In fact l saw a fish caught that was over 20 with no pecs, which surprised me as that fin is very important for a fish to retain balance and move accurately.

One way often to determine true wild fish is this. In the case of Browns, you will often find many fish of the same age class in the same zone of water as a rule fish less than 2 years of age.
3 to 5 ins is common, then 5 to 10 by this time the percentage may be lower by numbers.

I see no reason why your streams would not hold stream born fish, historically way back they did after the first stockings of the species.

As a matter of interest l one time checked a bunch of small stock Browns introduced into the White, fish of 5 to 7 ins on average. Few of these fish had perfect fin condition. In the majority of case there was total loss of one or both pectoral, retarded growth, reduction and distortion of fin rays and bone structure, in others dorsal fins were eroded or both, dorsal and pecs.
Its caused by erosion while the fish are retained in numbers in concrete raceways, in other cases it is due to fin nipping from the larger fish.

The simply answer is to ask your fisheries divisions what the stocking policies are for given rivers and streams, they may or may not tell you, also ask them for any data related to shocking surveys.

Davy

[tim_y]

[quote author=AaronJasper link=topic=4420.msg34870#msg34870 date=1273752641]
I agree with the above posts. But, don't count out big nymphs when trying to ctch wild fish! I hammered them yesterday on size 6 and 8 stoneflies.
[/quote]

I was in Brookie territory the other day Aaron with a friend. I was catching some on 14 micro stones when the questions of "how big can you go" came out. Even the little guys took sz 8's, and many of the trout inhaled the large fly.

[Davyfly]

For sure little fish will eat big flies, a 6 ins Brownie is well able to eat a 2ins minnow and a 1 ins stonefly.

[Silver Creek]

The reason I asked for the definition of a wild trout is that, if you define a wild trout by behavior and not where it came from, then we are really not talking about wild as in native but a specific "wild" behavior as in difficult to catch.

I'm with Davy in that planted trout that survive for several years become "wild" in their behavior. Those that don't adapt are at a survival disadvantage and they die off.

In Wisconsin, some of our hatchery trout are reared from eggs taken from fish captured in the wild and then released back into their native rivers and other river systems that do not have good reproduction. So are these wild fish or not? Eventually these hatchery fish will be inseparable by behavior and genetic testing from the native fish hatched in their native river.

Years ago one of my friends caught a 20 inch rainbow trout from a local river. The thing is that there had been no stocking of rainbows in that river for years and there are only two rivers in Wisconsin with self sustaining rainbow populations. This wasn't one of them. That "wild" fish had survived at least 3 winters in the river.

I can't be positive about your waters, but in Wisconsin some of those "wild smart/educated" trout in "stockie paradise" are previously stocked fish that have adapted.

[Davyfly]

Silver. which waters do you fish in WI. I used to live in Chicago and fished WI waters all the time.
Have you fished the Wolf river, awesome Brown trout fishing and smallmouth.
Spring creeks in the west are ok, rather heavy fishing pressure and they allow bait in many of them. Kickapoo was pretty good.

DW.

[Clema74]

Hi Silver Creek,

for me a wild trout is a trout bornt in the river and grown in the river from parents who were exactly the same.

I think a "native" could be wild, if she didn't grow in a hatchery... and so if she has laerned her behaviour in the original river. The most important for me would be the origins wild in the river.

[Silver Creek]

Davy,

I live in the center of Wisconsin about half way between Green Bay and Minneapolis, in one of the smaller towns next to Wausau. Our geographic claim to fame is that we are on 90 degrees east longitude, half way between the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, London and the 180 longitude; and on the 45th north latitude halfway between the equator and the north pole. So were at the center of our quarter of the earth containing the NA continent.

I am about 90 minutes from the Wolf River and have fished it for trout but it is a better smallmouth fishery now. It has really warmed up. The closest river to me is the The Plover about 20 minutes away to the east. Gary and Jason Borger filmed the FFF Casting Error DVD on the Plover.

Here's a section of the Plover





The Prairie River is to the north. My favorite area has sunken logs from the days when this area had virgin timber. There was a saw mill that used the spring flood to carry logs to the saw mill. They logged in the winter and floated logs down to the mill in the spring.







Here's a weathered white pine log with my fly rod to give you an example of how huge the virgin white pine forests were. Fishing this section of the Prairie is a step into the past.



The Eau Claire is to the East between the Plover and the Wolf River. I'd rather fish it than the Wolf. It has a lot more trout.





All three rivers have plenty of wild life including bears. I've run into a mother bear and a cub while fishing the Prairie. I've found fresh bear scat right where I fish the Eau Claire.