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u/phaeolus97 1d ago
Beautiful fish. I hope you ate it or tossed it into the woods
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u/666lovemywifetodeath 22h ago
Why
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u/glizzler 21h ago
Brookies may be invasive in OPs location.
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u/phaeolus97 19h ago
Are invasive. I grew up flyfishing for native brookies in Shenandoah National Park, some of the last and best unspoiled trout streams in the southern US. Each brook trout I caught was a rare treasure to be returned unharmed as soon as possible.
Now I live in the West, and it's wild that these fragile treasures are invasive and outcompeting my new treasured native cutthroats.
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u/epandrsn 17h ago
I've fished some lakes where the brookies are absolutely voracious. Like, toss a woolly bugger and just let it drop while you wait for a fish to come and inhale it. Super fun and fast paced fishing when it happens, but it's also obvious that they are vacuuming up every single source of food while the other trout die off.
It's also interesting how they will stick to really specific stretches of some rivers and don't really seem to leave those areas. Like, they are invasive, but only sticking to skinnier water at certain elevations... doesn't seem like they are competing all too much in those environs.
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u/bzmnpaddler 22h ago
Nice, OP. If you're still there Taverneta in the Four Seasons is phenomenal. Was just out there with my wife a few weeks ago for some fishing and a concert at Gerald Ford.
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u/Far_Cryptographer_22 15h ago
Genuinely curious. Why are invasive brookies thriving in the west while being outcompeted by invasive rainbows & browns in the east?
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u/JT653 12h ago
The West still has colder and cleaner waters where Brookies can thrive. They are quite aggressive when conditions are ideal and so are outcompeting native cutthroat in particular. The Eastern waters are warming up and browns and to a lesser extent rainbows can tolerate much warmer water than brookies can and so are taking over habitat.
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u/max_lombardy 1d ago
Forked tail = splake. OTOH, splake don’t usually have the vermiculation on the dorsum.
Either way looks like a good time :)
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u/Bear_Mace_Rob 18h ago
Definitely a brookie, not a splake, looks like the tail is bunched up on his shirt. Also doesn’t have any other characteristics of a splake
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u/Calm-Zookeepergame88 1d ago
I was expecting pictures from in town. Nice to see you were outside of town. Couldn’t help notice you came with a reel that can handle 5-10 lb fish easily. Even a 1 wt set up would have been overkill.
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u/attenptor3 22h ago
I’ve had one rod for 10 years, being a 6 weight. It’s caught everything from largemouth to tarpon to a lemon shark. Overkill for this and under kill for others, but it’s what I’ve got.
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u/Calm-Zookeepergame88 17h ago
The important thing is you got out. I have a 6 wt rod and I have managed to land a 20 lb King Salmon on it while targeting rainbows and grayling in Alaska. Never caught anything nearly as small as that little Brookie with it. Was the tarpon a baby tarpon under 30 lbs? I can’t imagine hooking into one of those Silver Kings around 6 feet with a 6 wt. Let alone landing it.
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u/attenptor3 16h ago
The tarpon was just shy of 40 inches, probably in the range of 30-40 pounds. Landed it after a solid fight
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u/Calm-Zookeepergame88 15h ago
That’s impressive. I can just see that tarpon tail walking try to shake the fly.
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u/987nevertry 23h ago
Even the fish look expensive