Brook trout are a type of char belonging to the salmon family, Salmonidae. Unlike other types of salmon, brook trout have no teeth on the roof of their mouth. Brook trout are crepuscular, or active mostly at dawn and dusk.
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In 4 seconds , you will be redirected to nwfactionfund. The National Wildlife Federation. They are known for their beautiful colors and tough spirit. One of the most important factors when fishing for brook trout is selecting the right baits and lures to use.
This is a critical component if you wish to land one of these beautiful fish. For that reason, I have put together this list of the best lures and baits for brook trout, as well as some helpful tips and tricks that will help you have more success out on the water.
The following list includes my favorite lures and baits for brook trout and are in no particular order. These lures are proven fish catchers and are all solid options when targeting brook trout. Also, be sure to keep reading for some helpful tips on how to select the right lure and some important information about fishing for brook trout.
Perhaps the smoothest spinner on the list is the Rooster Tail. You would be hard pressed to find a more productive spinner. This is a super popular trout lure and is one of one my personal favorites for brook trout. One of the reasons this spinner can be so effective is its hackle tail and attractive spinning action. This is a deadly combination and will make any nearby fish strike.
These spinners flat out catch brookies and are an excellent choice for any angler fishing for brook trout on a spinning rod. The Rapala Countdown Minnow and the Original Rapala are some of my all-time favorite lures to catch brook trout with. The brown trout and rainbow pattern have always produced for me in my local mountain lakes and streams. These are overall great lures for catching brook trout in almost any condition.
There is no doubt about it, flies are one of the best ways to target brook trout, especially in small rivers and streams. Dry flies are absolutely one of my favorite ways to catch brookies, but nymphs, streams and terrestrials also work really well. There are a few different options. Many anglers will use a casting bubble, which is a plastic bubble that you place on your line, or some type of a strike indicator. Both of these options will give weight to your line and allow you to cast out small light weight flies.
Fishing with one of these options is easy and is a great way to fish flies on a spinning rod. To learn more check out this article: How to Fish a Flies with a spinning rod. Small light weight jigs are a fantastic way to target brookies and often get overlooked by anglers. Put a trout float on your line about 2. Every 6 inches you would want to put a very tiny sinker on the line.
Use the smallest you can find. The purpose of the sinkers is to control the way your bait floats down stream. With this method, your bait will be almost straight down from your float as it moves down stream. When a fish hits your line your float reacts at once.
It also keeps your bait just off bottom and it prevents your line from floating sideways, which causes snags. In a larger river, the Brook Trout will stay at the base of a rapids or waterfalls. You may find them in deep pools but generally they like bubbles in the water. The most important aspect of Brook Trout fishing is how to approach the area you want to fish.
Brook Trout spook very easily. If you see a part of the river that looks like a good spot, walk through the bush until you are below the spot and approach it from down-stream. Cast up stream of the area you want to fish and let your bait float over the selected area. The 3-way swivel technique is better then using steel line or bait-walkers. You need a light action rod with 4 or 6-pound test line. You also need three-way swivels and a 1 or 2-oz weight depending how deep you want to fish.
Brook Trout generally are shallower then Lake Trout so a 1-oz weight is good to start with. Go to 2-oz if your boat trolls a little fast. By using light line, the line has less friction with the water and slices through so that your line goes down to the bottom without having lots of line out. Tie two 3-foot pieces of line to your three-way swivel. Use a 1 or 2-oz. Brook Trout like small lures. Small Cleos or a small Mepps Cyclopes are also good. Trolling Slow: Move the boat just fast enough for your lure to work and no faster.
If your boat is moving too fast, it will be very hard to find the bottom of the lake. Finding the bottom: The most important aspect of deep-water trout fishing is letting out line to get to the bottom. Hold the rod in one hand with the bail open. Let the line run through the palm of your other hand and grip the line.
Once the boat starts moving and you have a good straight troll going, open your hand with the line then close it again. This way you can let out a foot or two of line at a time. Get a rhythm going. Open, close, open, close. Your rod tip will bounce up and down as you release little bits of line at a time.
The rhythm of your rod tip bouncing will be disrupted when your weight hits the bottom of the lake. When this happens, reel up a foot or two. The purpose of this procedure is to keep your 3-way swivel setup from getting tangled. In the summer time, Brook Trout hit best in the morning between first light and AM.
Any other conditions will cause them to slow down. In some lakes the trout feed aggressively before dark. This event is called a "hatch" and is the situation all fly fishers search and hope for onstream.
During a hatch, when insects emerge en masse, trout become so focused on this one food item that they will often eat nothing else. This is called selective feeding. To do this you must be able to identify the insect, be familiar with its behavior, size, shape, and to a certain extent color, so it's important to have a working knowledge of the most important types of insects: mayflies Ephemeroptera , caddisflies Trichoptera , midges Diptera , and stoneflies Plecoptera.
Don't worry, you don't need to know the Latin names of each type of insect but it may help later on when you learn to discern one type of mayfly from another and want to accurately describe the insect to fellow fly fishers.
During your journey to becoming an expert fly fisher, you should make a habit of picking up rocks from the river bed and examining streamside bushes to identify the important insects in that stream.
Some fly fishers eventually evolve into amateur entomologists and take and keep samples of the insects they see onstream with the idea of tying flies that more accurately imitate them. Understanding these phases, how trout react to them, and what flies to mimic them with, helps you catch more fish. When fly fishers think of a hatch, they usually think of a mayfly hatch because mayflies create the most elegant fishing situations, are important foods in all trout waters, and have been studied and written about by fly fishers for hundreds of years.
Mayflies begin life as an egg, and hatch into an aquatic stage known as a nymph. Nymphs usually live about a year but may last two years or more, or just a few months, depending on the species.
Some mayfly species have two broods per year, making them important in the spring and again in the fall when the next generation matures. Mayfly nymphs range in size from 4mm to 40mm and most often have three tails sometimes two. Some mayfly nymphs are burrowers, others have adapted to cling to rocks in fast water, so each nymph species has a different body shape and design. Most are dark on top mottled brown, tan, or dark olive with a lighter-colored underside.
There are sophisticated fly patterns designed to accurately imitate specific mayfly nymph species on specific waters, but in most instances, general-purpose patterns such as Hare's-ear or Pheasant-tail nymphs in sizes 8 through 18 are fair imitations of nearly all important mayfly nymphs.
When a mayfly nymph rises toward the surface and splits its shuck, the insect that emerges is called a dun technically a subimago or pre-adult.
They have two large, upright wings, two or three tails, and most have two very small hind wings. The wings are opaque and their bodies are often drab-colored.
Duns are the mayflies that ride the water's surface in an upright position while their wings dry before taking flight. When duns are on the water, you are in the hatch situation fly fishers live for, and it's time to fish with dry flies, which float on the surface of the water. Siegfried Photos. Hopefully you'll find trout rising to the surface to eat these mayflies, and if you can get the right fly into the right place, you'll watch the trout rise to the surface and close its mouth around your fly.
Your local fly shop has bins full of dry flies to imitate the dun stage of each local mayfly species, but for most trout you don't need an exact imitation. As long as you have a fly that is about the right size and shape, and you deliver it accurately, you will catch fish.
A Parachute Adams is a good fly to imitate all mayfly duns. It has the right profile, the white wing post is easy for you to see on the water, and the gray body fools many fish. You'll need them in sizes 8 through 20 depending on the size of mayflies in your local waters.
Mayfly spinners gather and mate in large swarms over riffle areas. When they fall to the water, their clear wings are often outstretched. Ted Fauceglia Photo. After they hatch, mayfly duns fly to streamside vegetation where they molt or shed their skins and enter the adult or imago phase fly fishers call "spinners. The most noticeable difference is that the wings of mayfly duns are opaque or cloudy. Spinner wings are usually clear. A short time after molting into spinners — usually within 24 hours — the mayflies fly back to the water and gather in large swarms over riffle areas, where they mate.
This most often happens late in the evening or early in the morning. The females lay eggs and then die in the egg-laying process.
Males continue to fertilize eggs until they also fall spent to the water, with their outstretched wings flush with the water's surface. Trout sometimes prefer spinners over duns because they have learned that spinners have no chance to escape — they are dead — and are easier meals. Also, duns hatch over a relatively long period of time, while spinners fall to the water en masse, creating an irresistible feeding opportunity.
Because spinners lie flush in the surface film, you may need a spinner pattern with outstretched wings. One of the reasons we suggested a Parachute Adams above for the dun stage is that it also works well enough for the spinner stage. The parachute hackle leaves a footprint on the water that is similar to the outstretched wings of a mayfly spinner, and the trout often ignore the upright parachute post.
Flush-floating mayfly spinner imitations are tough to see, and tough to fish, so it's probably a good idea to give the Parachutes a try first, and move to more exacting patterns later if the fish refuse them. When caddis hatch, and also when they lay eggs, they often skitter along the water's surface. This action can entice trout into a feeding frenzy. In most streams there are at least as many caddisflies as mayflies.
Because caddisflies are more tolerant of water pollution, caddisflies are by far the most dominate stream-bottom insect in some streams. Caddisflies begin life as an egg on the river bottom and have three additional life stages: larva, pupa, and adult.
The eggs hatch into a small worm the larva which is the longest-lasting part of the life cycle and often exists for a year or more. There are more than 1, different caddis species; but to begin with you need only to recognize two general types: one where the larva builds a case from sticks or sand and pebbles on the stream bottom, and another free-ranging type with no case.
Cased caddis are normally cemented to the rocks, but they become important when there is a dramatic flush of water that churns the river bottom. George Anderson's Peeking Caddis is the best and most famous cased caddis imitation.
They frequently wash into the water column and are often more important to trout than the cased variety. Green Weenies, green Serendipities, or Green Rockworms are good flies to imitate these larvae.
When it matures, the larva makes an underwater cocoon where it changes into a pupa.
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