West Virginia Wildlife from Eyewitness News

Brook Trout

Most anglers are very familiar with the DNR's program stocking rainbow, golden and brown trout in our streams. Now it's time to learn more about brook trout.

November 9, 2005
Reporter: Patrick McMurtry
Videographer: Brad Rice

EYEWITNESS ONLINE WEBCAST VIDEO
C L I C K T O P L A Y

They might not be the biggest or even the most plentiful, but the brook trout, or brookie as they're affectionately called by anglers here, are the only native trout in West Virginia. Catching them is only half the fun.

Mike Shingleton/DNR says:
"There's a certain aura about brook trout. A lot of people have heard great brook trout fish stories as kids and as they grow up, they want to experience that."

"Where the brook trout occur are typically more remote areas, remote streams higher in the mountains and a lot of people like the solitude of when they go brook trout fishing."

"They're also the most beautiful trout we have here, beautiful."

These fish "are" beautiful, but this time of year, the brookie takes on stunning color as they get ready to spawn.

Here's something you might not know. Since the brookies spawn in the fall, they aren't really trout-they're char.

Either way, the brookie are more fiesty this time of year and that's one reason you'll see anglers on brook trout streams in the early fall. And the streams they fish aren't usually packed with other folks fishing.

Mike Shingleton/DNR says:
"The brook trout, the streams that they're in, are typically small headwater streams but they need the right conditions, they need the water temperature, they need the chemistry and they need spawning habitat and those kinds of stream and those conditions are not as plentiful as they were 100 years ago."

That's where the DNR comes in. They treat around 200 miles of streams a year with high quality, West Virginia limestone. That creates brook trout streams out of water that recently didn't have them.

"80% of the streams we lime wind up being brook trout streams and are managed for brook trout. From one perspective, our liming program is actually a brook trout program."

And that puts more brook trout in our waters for everyone to enjoy.