Everything you need to know about Maine's brook trout

This story was originally published in December 2020.

No fish species is more closely associated with Maine than the brook trout. In fact, one could argue that no fish species is more important to the state. Brook trout are to inland Maine what lobsters are to the coast, and they are as much a hallmark of the northern Maine forests as moose and loons.

Brook trout are fascinating fish. Maine is fortunate to have several different life forms of brook trout. Brook trout are important to Maine, and Maine is important to brook trout. We must do everything we can, and more than we are doing, to ensure that these unique wild native fish remain viable for generations to come.

Before we deal with topics related to nature conservation in future columns, a brief introduction to the brown trout is appropriate.

Originally referred to as Salmo fontinalis The naturalist Samuel Latham Mitchill discovered the brown trout in 1814 and today calls it Salvelinus fontinalis. Salvelinus is a genus and part of the Salmonines Subfamily of the Salmonids Family. The term fontinalis is Latin for “of or from a spring or well” and refers to the cold, clean water in which brown trout are found.

Brook trout are often called eastern brook trout, occasionally brook trout, brown trout, mud trout, salmon trout, speckled trout, and specs. In Maine, they are sometimes called squaretail, especially by older anglers. But by far the most common nickname is “brookie.”

The name brook trout is misleading. Brook trout are actually chars, not trout, and are more closely related to Arctic char, lake trout, bull trout, and Dolly Varden trout than to brown trout, rainbow trout, or cutthroat trout. And brook trout are more closely related to Atlantic salmon and landlocked salmon than to brown trout.

However, brook trout are the most “trout-like” species of char and the most adaptable salmonid species. They can live in tiny mountain streams, spring streams, meadow streams, running waters, large rivers, small shallow ponds, deep, expansive lakes, brackish estuaries and even in salt water.

In many of their habitats, brown trout are the dominant species, accounting for over 90 percent of the total fish biomass, demonstrating that they can live – and even thrive – under conditions that are not possible for many other fish species, even other salmonids.

Brook trout have been found in the Appalachians, the Great Lakes, and Eastern Canada for several million years. They are one of the most widespread native salmonids in North America, along with Arctic char and lake trout. In the United States, brook trout are the most widespread native salmonid.

Brook trout are native to Labrador, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and eastern Manitoba. In the United States, they are found along the Appalachian corridor from northern Maine to northern Georgia, in parts of the Midwest, and in most of the Great Lakes region. In many states, they are the only native salmonids.

Brook trout are native to both sides of the southern Appalachian Mountains and can be found in waters that flow into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

The southernmost population of native brook trout in the world is found in northern Georgia in the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River in the Chattahoochee National Forest. The northernmost populations are found in far northern Quebec.

Unlike many other fish, brook trout are classified primarily by species rather than subspecies. However, there are two recognized subspecies of brook trout: the aurora trout and the extinct New Hampshire silver trout. The aurora trout is best described as a brook trout with no pattern or spots and is native to only two lakes in the Temagami District of Ontario.

Although the term is often used to describe watershed-level populations, there are only two officially recognized species of brook trout: northern and southern. The boundary between the northern and southern brook trout species is in the New River basin in northern Virginia.

Formerly considered subspecies of the Northeast Coast and coastal trout of the Great Lakes, they are now considered life forms or life forms of the northern brook trout. The silver trout, an extinct subspecies of the brook trout, was once considered a form of Arctic char.

Brook trout can be purely fluvial, meaning they live and spawn in flowing water. They can also be adfluvial, meaning they are born in a stream but live primarily in a lake or pond. Some brook trout live and spawn in lakes and ponds and are called lacustrine. In Massachusetts, what looks like brook trout spawning in tidal waters was recently documented. All brook trout build spawning pits or depressions in the gravel.

Newborn brown trout are called fry or juveniles. They stay in the spawning pit until their yolk sac is empty. Brown trout leave the spawning pit as fry and move to shallow water to feed on zooplankton. The next stage are the fry, which can be identified by their vertical stripes, and move to deeper water to feed on small insect larvae. The final stages are juveniles and adults.

Brook trout populations are most numerous where good spawning habitat is available in rivers. In cases where pond fish use lake spawning habitat, populations are usually more sparse. This is called recruitment, and high recruitment means high densities; low recruitment means low densities.

Brown trout in small streams rarely live more than a few years. However, in large lakes, particularly in Canada, they can live up to 10 years. In ponds and rivers, they are somewhere in between. The oldest known brown trout, a non-native species, was almost 25 years old and was found in a high-elevation lake in California.

The largest brook trout ever caught was 30 inches long, had an estimated girth of 20 inches, and weighed 14.5 pounds. It was caught in July 1915 in the Nipigon River in Ontario and was probably an inshore fish. In 1827, Daniel Webster caught a sea trout of about the same size in the East Connecticut River on Long Island.

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Everything you need to know about Maine's brook trout

Anna Harden

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