Connecticut's elusive wild rainbow trout: this a quick glance at the topic and my story of catching one.
Although the State of Connecticut has many unstocked trout streams with wild brookies and browns, the same can't be said for rainbow trout. Over the last century, countless millions of them have been stocked from one corner of the state to the next, but a self-sustaining population of wild rainbow trout has never arisen in Connecticut's waters.
That said, once in a Blue Moon, when conditions are just right, some stocked rainbow trout will successfully spawn and produce one-off broods of wild rainbows. State surveys have documented these wild rainbows only a relative handful of times since the 80s, sometimes in middling stocked streams where they'll likely never be found again. But there's two river systems in Connecticut where wild rainbows are... well, still quite rare... but maybe less so than everywhere else. One is the Housatonic watershed, where wild rainbows have been documented several times, and the other is the Farmington, where this happened while I was out flyfishing back in 2020.
Parr rainbows like this, coming in well below the smallest stocked size class, offer the most reliable insight into the trout's wild origins that you can get while out on the water. When it comes to rainbows of adult size, the only reliable way to distinguish a holdover stocked fish from a wild fish is through laboratory scale analysis.
So that's my wild Connecticut rainbow story, folks. And who knows, maybe that little guy is all grown up now and destined for the end of your line...
24 апр 2022
