Char · Salvelinus fontinalis
Brook Trout
Also called Brookie, Speckled trout, Speck, Squaretail.
Short answer
The brook trout is a char, not a true trout, and is the only trout native to most of the eastern United States. It has pale worm-like markings on a dark green back, red spots in blue halos, and white leading edges on orange fins. It needs the coldest, cleanest water of any of them.
How to identify a brook trout
- Vermiculation
- Pale worm-like squiggles over a dark olive-green back. Unmistakable and unique among the trouts.
- Red spots in blue halos
- Scattered along the flank. A brown has red spots in pale halos; a brookie's are ringed in blue.
- Fins
- Orange fins with a crisp white leading edge followed by a black line. The best quick field mark.
- Tail
- Square or barely forked — hence "squaretail".
What a brook trout is
The brook trout is the native fish of the eastern mountains and the upper Midwest, and it is the one with the strictest requirements: cold, clean, well-oxygenated water, and not much competition. Logging, warming and the arrival of brown and rainbow trout pushed it steadily upstream, and in much of its range it now survives in the headwaters above where the introduced fish can live — small streams, high altitude, small fish. Maine is the exception and the stronghold, holding the great majority of the country's remaining wild brook trout ponds. It is also, by common consent, the most beautiful freshwater fish in North America.
- Native to
- Native to eastern North America, from the Appalachians and the upper Midwest north through eastern Canada. Introduced widely in the West.
- Typical size
- Six to ten inches in headwater streams, and that is normal rather than disappointing. Maine ponds and Labrador rivers produce fish over four pounds.
- What they eat
- Opportunistic and not fussy. Insects of every stage, terrestrials falling from overhanging cover, and in Maine ponds, smelt. Brook trout in headwater streams eat whatever arrives, which is why they are the easiest trout to catch on a dry fly.
Where brook trout live
Native from Georgia's mountains north through the Appalachians, the Great Lakes states and New England to Labrador. Introduced and wild in the Rockies, the Sierra and the Black Hills, where it is often small, abundant and considered a nuisance to native cutthroat.
Fly fishing in Maine Fly fishing in North Carolina Fly fishing in Virginia Fly fishing in West Virginia Fly fishing in Vermont
Conservation status
Secure as a species, but the Southern Appalachian strain has lost most of its historic range to warming, logging and introduced trout, and is the subject of restoration work from Georgia to Virginia. Sea-run brook trout — salters — survive in only a handful of coastal streams.
Protected status and the rules that follow from it are set state by state and change. Before you fish, check the current regulations for the water you are standing in — this page is a starting point, not a legal reference.
How to catch brook trout
Fish small water, upstream, with short casts and a visible dry fly. In the mountain streams where most brook trout live, presentation matters far less than stealth and approach — the fish will take almost any reasonable dry, but it will not take anything if it saw you coming. A royal wulff or a parachute Adams drifted into pocket water is a complete method for an entire summer.
- White-edged orange fins settles it instantly. Nothing else has them.
- They are char, which is why they are patterned in light on dark rather than dark on light.
- Small fish in small water is the normal result. Measure the day differently.
Flies that work for brook trout
Each of these is a card in the deck, and each has a full page in Our Fly-brary.
Keep reading
- How to release a trout — handling, and why it matters more for some species than others
- How to read water — where each of these fish holds
- Hatches and what trout eat — the food these fish are feeding on
- Fly fishing by state — which species you will meet, state by state
Rainbow Trout Brown Trout Cutthroat Trout Steelhead Bull Trout Lake Trout Golden Trout Arctic Grayling Dolly Varden Tiger Trout Mountain Whitefish