Trout

Centre County, Pennsylvania's Spring Creek ran low and clear when my friend Art and I crossed it last Saturday. The public access area at the Benner Springs hatchery had a few vehicles.

The leaves aren't the only thing that change colors in fall. Native brook trout, as their fall spawning time nears, take on a brilliance that matches that of any leafy transition.

As the leaves begin to turn and the weather gets colder people start to shift gears from fishing to hunting.

I'll never forget my first experience with the unique sport of back trolling for steelhead. I was fishing with Les Wedge and Cliff Creech, fishery managers for New York State, on the Salmon River with guide Ken Budd in his West Coast-style drift boat.

The other day a friend and I were fishing a backwoods lake that held lake trout and brook trout.

When discussing the best means of handling a freshly-landed trout, which will then be released, opinions vary as whether or not to net the fish.

Native Trout Adventrues: Episode 7

The brook trout reaches its ultimate potential in the cold waters of northern Canada, where orange-paunched fish of 4 and 5 pounds wallop huge streamers and large dry flies with a vengeance. I've experienced this type of fishing a number of times, and it's a blast. My most memorable trip was a five-day float trip in canoes down the Sutton River through Polar Bear Provincial Park in Ontario.

The drift looked perfect. I had cast a No. 12 Pheasant Tail bead-head nymph into the head of a small, dark pool on southern Missouri’s Barren Fork Creek, one of six cold water wild trout streams in the Missouri Ozarks.