Brown trout par?

[sulphur4]

Trying to determine if this is a young brown or rainbow from a tiny creek I discovered held native brookies (second photo with rod). I lean toward a brown. Any thoughts? They are each all of 4 inches.

[chsparkman]

The top is a brown, the bottom looks like a brook.

[quashnet]

Top fish is a brown trout. Look for the reddish tinge in the adipose fin (hard to see in your photo, but there). The red spots are unlikely to be found on a rainbow parr. The brookie also has red spots, of course, but overall the brookie will have light spots on a darker background (char markings) while the rainbow and brown will have dark markings on a lighter background.

[sulphur4]

Thanks. Interesting that wild browns are propagating in this tiny creek, which I don't believe is stocked. The brook trout make sense, but I wonder how the browns took hold there? I am in Northwest New Jersey near the Pequest Trout Hatchey, but to my knowledge they only stock rainbows in the local rivers, such as the Munconetcong and Pequest Rivers.

[Perry Palin]

In my experience rainbows have many small dark spots on the back, and your parr has fewer larger dark spots, and red spots on the flanks, like some of our browns.

I don't know your area. Here in the upper Mississippi drainage some browns will drop down into the inhospitable Mississippi during the winter months and then run up any of the small tributary streams when the water warms in the spring, and they could establish themselves in places they have never been planted. Also, I know of a few brook trout streams that hold some reproducing feral browns that surely were planted, but with no records of such for over 50 years.

[quashnet]

The most recent web page that I can find for the hatchery says that brooks, browns, and rainbows are stocked, while the local TU page says that rainbows and browns are not stocked. Whatever the current situation may be, historically browns were stocked and have taken hold as a wild, non-native population.

Sometimes individuals, and not the state, introduce new trout species. Sometimes this action makes a big difference; other times, not so much. In the early 1980s I vacationed in Vermont during leaf-peeper season, staying at a B&B located at the base of a very steep hill that was partly wooded and partly meadow. The tiniest rivulet you can imagine ran down the hill through the long grasses. The previous year, the B&B owner had dug a pond about halfway up the hill. He said that he had stocked it with trout but had received no reports of fish taken. So one morning, instead of heading to the nearby river, I hiked up the hill to see what was going on in the meadow pond. Autumn leaves covered the pond. Gentle rises were everywhere as the trout nudged the leaves to dislodge terrestrials. I cast tiny flies on a long leader, and when I didn't get tangled up in a leaf I was rewarded with a brightly-colored brook trout. I spent an hour catching one lovely brookie after another, and putting them back. I also caught one oddball little rainbow trout. Back at the B&B, I told the owner how much I had enjoyed catching those beautiful brook trout. "How could brook trout have gotten in there?" he asked. "I stocked a lot of rainbow trout, and nothing else." You and I know how the brookies got in there!

[Hellmtflies]

Top is clearly a brown. The bottom photo looks to be the same but not clear enough of the top side. Also, I don't see any white "Piping" on the fins of the trout in the lower photo. All of that said, if you have both the wild browns and native brookies in the same creek please keep alert for a wild tiger trout in the mix. Then you know you have something worth your time.

Just curious though. Is this Dunfield Creek?

[cdmoore]

Top brown. Red dots and and fin color are easiest tells.

Bottom brookie. Those spots are pink not red. Dark back and square tail are more giveaways. I don’t often see white fin marks on such young fish.