My Love Affair With Brook Trout

My love affair with these brilliantly colored finned creatures started when I was 5 years of age.

I remember following my uncles down this old dirt road.

At the end of the road there was a stream that ran through the woods behind my Grampa's house.

Grampa had taken an old school building and converted it into a home for his family and himself.

At that time I lived with my grandparents in the eastern townships of Quebec. We’d start our brook trout fishing adventure off by digging up some worms out in the field that was behind the house.

 Next on the way to the stream my uncle would break a branch off a willow tree and tie a piece of line that had a hook on the other end.

With our fishing equipment in hand off we’d go to get supper. We’d spend the afternoon drifting the worms under logs and fallen trees that lay across the stream. Under cut banks always seemed to be a good spot also.

Upon returning with our freshly cleaned specked trout my grandma would go work her magic. She had many a brook trout recipe.

I remember those days fondly now. Strange though fishing equipment then cost pennys and today it can run into $1000’s.

Fifty years have come and gone since then, I haven’t been back in over thirty years now.

But I have fished for these colorful trout, with their worm like markings on the back to the purple sheen sides with bluish halos around spots of red, orange and cream color, in Ontario and out west in Alberta.

Southern Ontario has many brook trout streams. They tend to meander through pasture land and cedar bush.

A 14 - 16 inch brook trout would be considered a trophy in these waters.

With the average being around 8 inches.

There are also some stocked ponds that offer up some great fishing for the kids.

In Northern Ontario speckled trout fishing  can be enjoyed in ice cold streams that flow over and around huge rock formations, forming pools and eddies.

Specks love these hiding places to find food and shelter.

1000’s of crystal clear lakes that populate the rugged landscape offer up superb speckled trout fishing.

I have great memories of canoeing along the shoreline of a northern lake with my wife and her mother casting for specks off beaver huts that dotted the shoreline.

Some days they'd bite like crazy, the next not a bite. Fish or no fish I have wonder memories of those great canoe trips.

Brook trout in the northern streams average a bit bigger then their cousins to the south. Between the cobble stone lake that our cabin rested on and the surrounding lakes there’d be a few 5lbs. + taken every year.

Not exactly world record brook trout, but I can guarantee, any angler would have been extremely pleased when their 5lbs + brookie came up along side their boat.

Lets not forget about ice fishing for brook trout. Some of my greatest fishing adventures have been in the frozen north.

In the winter many of the northern lakes are accessible by snowmobile and atv's. Lots of these lakes cannot be reached in the summer time.

So needless to say, there can be some wonderful, rewarding brook trout fishing trips to be had in the province of Ontario during the winter months.

Rolland Meigs