Trout · Salmo trutta
Brown Trout
Also called Brownie, German brown, Loch Leven.
Short answer
The brown trout is a buttery gold-brown fish with dark spots and distinctive red or orange spots ringed in pale halos, and an almost unspotted tail. It is not native to North America, it is the wariest of the common trout, and it grows larger and lives longer than the others.
How to identify a brown trout
- Red spots
- Orange to red spots ringed with pale halos along the flank. No other common trout has them.
- Tail
- Almost unspotted, or lightly spotted at the top only. The clearest field mark.
- Colour
- Butter-yellow to olive-brown flanks, darker on the back, often brassy in low water.
- Jaw
- Large males develop a pronounced hooked kype in autumn.
What a brown trout is
The brown trout is a European fish that has become the backbone of American trout fishing. Eggs from Germany reached the United States in the 1880s, and the first planting went into a tributary of Michigan's Pere Marquette in 1884. It took hold because it tolerates warmer, siltier water than a brook trout and is far harder to catch than a rainbow — a combination that let it survive rivers that had been logged, dammed and warmed. A big brown is largely nocturnal, territorial and intolerant of mistakes, which is why it has a reputation among anglers out of proportion to its numbers.
- Native to
- Native to Europe, North Africa and western Asia. First planted in United States waters in 1884, in a tributary of Michigan's Pere Marquette.
- Typical size
- Twelve to twenty inches in most rivers. Tailwaters produce fish in double figures; the world record for a river-caught brown came from Arkansas's Little Red at 40 pounds 4 ounces in 1992.
- What they eat
- Insects when small; fish, crayfish and anything else that moves once past about sixteen inches. A large brown is a predator first and an insect feeder second, which is why streamers catch disproportionately big ones.
Where brown trout live
Wild and self-sustaining across almost every trout region in the lower 48: the Driftless spring creeks, the Catskills and Pennsylvania limestone, the southern Appalachians, the Ozark tailwaters, and the whole Rocky Mountain West. Rare in Alaska.
Fly fishing in Arkansas Fly fishing in Michigan Fly fishing in Pennsylvania Fly fishing in Wisconsin Fly fishing in Kentucky
Conservation status
Secure and in places too successful — brown trout compete with and prey on native brook and cutthroat trout, and several states manage them as a problem in headwater streams where natives are being restored.
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 brown trout
Fish low light and awkward water. Browns hold under cut banks, beneath overhanging trees and against structure rather than out in the open riffle, and the biggest ones feed at night. A streamer stripped along the bank at dawn, dusk or in coloured water is the classic way to find a large one. In daylight they are the fish most likely to refuse a fly for reasons you will never identify, so fine tippet and a long drift matter more than pattern.
- A nearly clean tail and red spots in halos means brown trout.
- The big ones feed at night. Daylight fishing is for the small ones.
- They sit against structure, not in open water. Fish the awkward casts.
Flies that work for brown 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 Brook Trout Cutthroat Trout Steelhead Bull Trout Lake Trout Golden Trout Arctic Grayling Dolly Varden Tiger Trout Mountain Whitefish