Brookie color question

[mikel]

I should know this...but I don't.

I do know that with dollies it's the males that get the orange belly and color up big time for spawning.

I caught some really pretty brookies last fall that had full color on. On the same trip there were many that had color, but not the same or as much...

Were the really bright ones males and the plain Janes were the females?

Thanks...-Mike

[bclem81]

Brook trout generally spawn between September and November, and its cousin the brown trout spawn a lil later between October and December. Sometimes these genetics get crossed and a tiger trout is produced. The older the trout is and the closer to spawning season, the easier it is to determine between the sexes. In general, mature male trout tend to be more laterally compressed than female trout and during the spawning period may be brighter in coloration. Conversely, female trout tend to have a more rounded snout and body conformation. Also mature males at breeding time develop a hooked lower jaw (Kype) and their lower flanks become brilliantly suffused with reddish-orange and white tipped fins.

Hope this helps. Being from upstate New York, I love brook trout fishing. There is a lot of good water that holds these guys in California, they are not as big, but still as aggresive as them.

[wineslob]

The males are the ones that color up. I've seen them go from green backed with bright silver/red sides to almost flourescent orange. Usually around the first week or two of June.

There may be a fall spawn also?

[oldtrout]

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patters that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
— Cormac McCarthy

[jbird]

The males are the ones that color up. I've seen them go from green backed with bright silver/red sides to almost flourescent orange. Usually around the first week or two of June.

There may be a fall spawn also?

Brook trout are fall spawners. Also mis-identified as trout. they are, in fact Char.

[mikel]

Thanks guys...I can't wait for summer in the high lakes. There's nothing more fun (IMO) than lounging in my tube, tossing dries to rising brookies.

-mike

[bclem81]

dont forget about the streams up there. they are loaded with them.