Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

Trout fishing in America used to be dead easy.  Find any cold clear river … cast a brightly colored fly … catch a sizeable brook trout … repeat as needed.  On Febru­ary 28, 1883, however, things got much more difficult.  The days of effortless trout were over.  What happened?  Eighty thousand brown trout eggs ar­rived from Germany at the state fish hatch­ery in Cold Spring Harbor, NY.  These eggs and others that fol­lowed were planted in New York rivers and, eventu­ally, throughout the eastern seaboard.  The immi­grants thrived in the New World, and within 20-30 years, brown trout were the dominant trout of the East.  Some anglers praised the new species for being a more worthy adversary.  Others scorned it for displacing native brook trout.  Brown trout “aggres­siveness” was blamed for declining numbers of brook trout, but diminished water quality in an increasingly industrial nation was at least as impor­tant.  Brown trout are more tolerant of marginal wa­ters, and they colonized habitat that no longer sup­ported brookies.  Brook trout would have been dis­placed by chubs and dace were it not for arrival of the brown trout.

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