Char · Salvelinus confluentus
Bull Trout
Also called Dolly, Bull.
Short answer
The bull trout is a native char of the cold Northwest, pale-spotted on a dark olive body with no black markings at all on the dorsal fin. It is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, may not be targeted on most waters, and is most often hooked by accident.
How to identify a bull trout
- No black on the dorsal
- The legal field mark. "No black, put it back." A bull trout's dorsal fin has no dark spots or markings.
- Pale spots on dark
- Cream, pink or pale yellow spots on an olive-green back, like all char. Never dark spots on light.
- Head
- Large, broad and flattened relative to the body. The name is not an accident.
- Fins
- White leading edges like a brook trout, but no vermiculation on the back.
What a bull trout is
Bull trout are the char of the interior Northwest and the most demanding fish in this guide about where they live: they need very cold, very clean water with connected migration routes, and they vanished from much of their range as rivers were dammed, logged and warmed. They are predatory, long-lived and capable of travelling great distances between feeding and spawning water. For an angler the practical point is legal rather than technical — bull trout are ESA-listed, they may not be targeted on most waters, and an angler who cannot tell one from a rainbow should learn before fishing the upper rivers of Montana, Idaho or Washington.
- Native to
- Native to the cold rivers of the Northwest: Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and western Canada.
- Typical size
- Commonly 16 to 24 inches where they are healthy; migratory fish exceed ten pounds.
- What they eat
- Almost entirely fish once grown — sculpins, whitefish, juvenile trout and salmon. Bull trout are the apex predator of the rivers they live in.
Where bull trout live
Montana west of the Divide, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and a relict population in Nevada's Jarbidge River — the southernmost in the world. Strongest in the Metolius in Oregon and the Flathead system in Montana.
Fly fishing in Montana Fly fishing in Idaho Fly fishing in Washington Fly fishing in Oregon Fly fishing in Nevada
Conservation status
Listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act across its United States range. On most waters it may not be targeted at all, and incidental catches must be released immediately without being removed from the water. A few specific waters permit targeted catch and release under state rules.
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 bull trout
In most places you should not be trying. Where it is permitted, bull trout are taken on large streamers fished deep and slow, and they are famous for following a hooked trout to the net. If one takes your fly by accident, keep it in the water, unhook it quickly and let it go — and know the identification before you go, because the law turns on it.
- No black on the dorsal fin, put it back. Learn this before you fish the Northwest.
- An incidental catch must stay in the water. Unhook it there.
- They follow hooked fish. A bull trout chasing your rainbow is a sight worth having.
Flies that work for bull 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 Brook Trout Cutthroat Trout Steelhead Lake Trout Golden Trout Arctic Grayling Dolly Varden Tiger Trout Mountain Whitefish