Submitted by chris_hunt on Thu, 2016-12-08 08:54 Conservation West of The Rockies Trout Magazine Public lands not for sale Vote Up Down +1 + Screen Shot 2016-12-08 at 9.57.20 AM.png The most beautiful fish in the world? The author thinks so. by Chris Hunt My cold and wet hands trembling, I waded to the pebbly bank of Argentina's Rio Corcovado and ceremoniously dropped my fly rod like a beat poet dropping the mic and walking off stage. I looked to heavens and thought, "Now's as good a time as any." Just moments before, those trembling appendages were dunked to the elbows cradling the fish of my lifetime. I'd managed to connect with an autumn brook trout running into the river from Lago Vinter. I'd hooked the massive char on a nymph drifted deep in the blue-green water, and after a handful of spirited runs and a couple of leaps, the fish finally came to the net. There, spent and resting on the mesh, 22 inches of North American splendor pumped Andean water through its gills. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was the most beautiful fish I've ever seen. Screen Shot 2016-12-08 at 9.50.50 AM.png The author with a Rio Corcovado brook trout. I've caught brook trout since I was a little kid. The first trout I remember catching was a healthy 10-inch brookie yanked from the dark water of a beaver pond on the shoulders of Tincup Pass in the headwaters of Colorado's Taylor River. My grandfather, bedecked in a green and white plaid fishing shirt, the typical Henry Blake fishing hat (Google it, milennials) adorning his balding head, stood at my side and cheered as I lifted the stunning little fish from the water. It was the beginning of a life-long addiction, and not just to fly fishing, but to brook trout, in general. What I didn't know then, and what I've since learned many times over, is that my first fly rod trout wasn't a trout at all, but a char. And this char didn't belong in the water from which I yanked it, just as the fish I managed to coax to a nymph on the Rio Corcovado had no business being in that river. Brookies are native to America's Eastern Seaboard, from north Georgia all the way north to Labrador. It's been propagated all over the world, from these once trout-less waters of Patagonia to the little headwaters of central Colorado ... to the upper Green River of Wyoming. And, in most cases, while the non-native char may provide opportunities for anglers like me, they're hell on the fish that do belong there. A new study put forth by Matthew Anderson, a fisheries biologist with the Bridger-Teton National Forest, describes in detail just how noxious non-native brook trout have become in the headwaters of the Green, which should be home to native Colorado River cutthroat trout, but, for the most part, aren't any longer. Anderson's study, which was to determine the impact on native trout from livestock grazing on a 169,000-acre project area of the upper Green River drainage, found little damage to the fishery from cattle and horses. Instead, his study notes, "The best monitoring information available indicates that populations (of native Colorado River cutthroat trout) that are being invaded by competing non-native salmonids, particularly brook trout, are experiencing population declines." As anglers, this study is but confirmation of something we've likely known all along. Brookies simply take over. I've seen it hundreds of times in hundreds of streams where either well-intentioned fisheries managers many decades ago, or, sadly, "bucket biologists" introduced these Appalachian treasures to provide more opportunity. The exact opposite has proven true. Brook trout, fall spawners and very opportunistic and aggressive feeders, more often than not will outcompete native trout. On the Bridger-Teton, the streams with the strongest native trout populations—both Colorado River cutthroat trout in the Green River drainage and Yellowstone cutthroat trout in the Snake River drainage—are streams where brookies have yet to colonize. In the headwaters of the Green, of the 217 miles of stream Anderson surveyed for fish, only 27 miles contained native cutthroat trout. Brookies were dominant throughout the system. Even in the waters where cutthroats were present, brookies still outnumbered the native fish. Hilda Sexauer, a fisheries supervisor with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that brookies seem to be able to handle the stresses of an austere environment better than most trout and char. "Brook trout mature an an ealier age," Sexauer said. "They grow faster, and they do seem to be be able to withstand a little bit more degraded habitat than the Colorado River cutthroat can, but I don't have any scientific data to back that up. They are prolific, and when conditions are right for them, they will just take off." Anderson elaborated. "All it takes is a boulder to shift or a tree to fall or a really high-flow event," Anderson told the News and Guide. "Brook trout will initially move into areas where cutthroat have been existing, and they'll coexist for a while. As time goes by, they'll take over." Anecdotally, this all makes perfect sense. In fly fishing circles in the West, many of us have taken to calling the small, backcountry headwater creeks "brook trout streams," because that's all that seems to be in them. Brookies were introduced in western waters as early as the 1850s. They've had plenty of time—and plenty of help, initially from fisheries managers and later from anglers who've acted illegally to spread the non-native fish's range over the last 150 years—to turn up in some of the most remote and most wild country left in the nation. From a biological perspective, the brook trout invasion is nothing short of tragic. It has contributed greatly to the fact that native cutthroat trout in the West now occupy about 10 percent of their native waters (it' s not the only factor, of course, but it is a significant factor). From an angling perspective, one could also claim a tragedy. Brookies, as Sexauer said, are prolific. They tend to literally eat themselves out of house and home, and when they've managed to exhaust their resources, they don't simply go away. They get smaller. Their growth stunts. A mature, spawning brook trout in a colonized stream may be five years old but only six inches long. At this point, they've lost most of their value to anglers. We don't call them "little brook trout" for nothing. Now, for clarity, I absolutely love brook trout. While Sexauer notes that they can tolerate less-than-ideal conditions, I would argue, from a purely experiential perspective, that if you're catching brook trout, you're someplace pretty special. Even in their native waters on the shoulders of the Appalachians, brook trout are found in the coldest and cleanest waters, often thriving in places where the human footprint is all but invisible. In the West, where more of this remote country is still readily available thanks to the propensity of public lands, it makes sense that brookies are doing quite well. Screen Shot 2016-12-08 at 9.50.38 AM.png The Rio Corcovado. But on that autum day on the Corcovado, my appreciation for brook trout reached a crescendo. This was no stunted fish, no six-inch specimen. This was a treasure, a true angling trophy and one that touched me to my soul. As I looked to the sky and waited for God to take me, I whispered to my late grandfather. "Are you watching, old man?" Chris Hunt is the national editorial director for Trout Media. He lives and works in Idaho Falls, Idaho.