Pennsylvania streams home to plenty of brown trout, but none that are ‘native’ [column] | Outdoors

Did you know there’s no such thing as a “native” brown trout in Pennsylvania?

For sure, there are wild brown trout.

But not natives.

That’s because the brown trout is not native to our state.

The brook trout – Pennsylvania’s state fish – is the only trout native to Pennsylvania.

It’s hard to fathom there are no native browns, given the plethora of wild brown trout streams across Pennsylvania.

Even Lancaster County has them.

We’ve got four, in fact – Conowingo Creek, an unnamed tributary to Conowingo Creek, Tucquan Creek and Shearers Creek.

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission already has identified hundreds of Class A Wild Trout Waters across the state that “support a population of naturally produced (brown) trout of sufficient size to support a long-term and rewarding sport fishery,” an agency document on the topic states.

And according to the agency, over half of the state’s 86,000 miles of streams still have not yet been surveyed for wild trout.

So who knows how many more wild brown trout streams we have?

Biologists pick away at the non-surveyed waters list every year, but it’s going to be a long time before every stream has been checked.

“A population of naturally produced (brown) trout of sufficient size to support a long-term and rewarding sport fishery.”

If you’ve fished for wild brown trout in Pennsylvania, you already know how rewarding those fisheries are.

Stocked trout don’t fight like wild browns.

Stocked trout don’t hit a lure/fly/bait like wild browns.

Stocked trout aren’t as difficult to fool as wild browns.

On back-to-back days this spring, I fished a heavily-stocked trout stream and a wild brown trout stream − both in Pennsylvania.

On the stocked stream, I landed a hefty, 19-inch rainbow trout that nibbled a nightcrawler as it bounced along the bottom of the stream.

The trout pulled hard for a bit, but it didn’t run far, and was soon flopping on the surface. I was able to steer it to the net in short order, even with ultralight spinning tackle.

The next day, I cast a spoon as far as I could heave it across some heavy water on the wild brown trout stream.

A 16-inch, wild brown slammed the lure after about three turns of the reel handle and the fight was on.

I couldn’t muscle this fish like I could the rainbow.

It knew how to use the current to stay away from me.

The closer it got, the more torpedo-like runs it made.

Eventually, I won the war, but the fight in this fish was exponentially higher than the bigger, stocked rainbow.

It was built differently too.

There was no sagging belly fat, like the rainbow had.

The wild brown was sleek and solid – it was built to survive whatever nature threw at it.

Though they are not native here, Pennsylvania has several world-famous brown trout streams.

Penns Creek, Little Juniata River, Spring Creek and Fishing Creek, to name a few.

So how did these fish get here?

How is it that brown trout thrive in places where nature didn’t originally intend them to be?

That story dates back to 1866, when the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission was created through legislation signed by Gov. Andrew Curtin.

The development and industrialization of Pennsylvania were negatively impacting fish populations, and so the commission was created to arrest the declines.

“The large number of streams running through our state have become so depopulated of fishes by pollution and persistent wanton slaughter as to render them almost valueless to the people as a source of food,” the first annual report of the fledgling agency’s Board of Commissioners stated in 1873.

Almost immediately, plans were set to build hatcheries to raise fish – trout included – for stocking to supplement wild populations.

The state’s first trout hatchery actually was built in Marietta in 1873 at Hoover’s Spring. It only operated for a short time until 1883, when it was abandoned.

In 1874, land was acquired near Corry, Erie County, for a new hatchery that still operates today.

And it was there, in 1886, that 10,000 brown trout eggs were delivered from Germany for hatching.

The brown trout that hatched from those eggs and grew in that hatchery are the Adam and Eve for today’s vast network of wild brown trout streams across Pennsylvania.

Brown trout are native to a wide area of Europe, as well as western Asia and high-elevation rivers in Morocco.

They were first introduced to the United States in Michigan in 1883, before being delivered to Pennsylvania three years later.

It’s not surprising that brown trout flourish here.

They are more tolerant of siltation and higher water temperatures, as compared to brook trout.

While brook trout stick to those rocky, cool, rushing mountain streams, the browns also can survive in the larger, slower, warmer streams that flow through the flat country at the bottom of the mountains.

According to Fish and Boat Commission records, the brown trout’s optimum water temperature range is 50-60 degrees, although it can tolerate temperatures in the low 70s.

Even stocked brown trout are known to hold over well in many streams. They can survive well beyond their initial stocking, so long as they aren’t caught by an angler or killed by a predator, according to Fish and Boat Commission studies.

When they inhabit the same rocky, infertile streams, brown trout will grow a little bit bigger than brookies.

But in more fertile streams, brown trout can grow much bigger.

Famed Pennsylvania fly angler Joe Humphries for many years held the Pennsylvania state record for catching the biggest brown trout with a 34-inch, 16-pound behemoth he caught at midnight on Fishing Creek in Centre County in 1977.

That record stood until 2000, when Fazle Buljubasic caught a brown trout weighing 19 pounds, 10 ounces on Lake Erie.

The state record was broken again in 2020, when Robert Ferraro caught a brown trout weighing 20 pounds, 9 ounces on Lake Erie.

But those two latter trout were lake fish. Humphries’ trout came from a stream, where the living and growing for a brown trout is much more difficult.

I’ve fished wild brown trout streams every year for the past 36 years. The biggest wild brown I’ve ever caught was maybe 20 inches.

There was a day several years ago when I was fishing Penns Creek on the remote, catch-and-release, artificial-lures-only stretch in Union County, when my brother-in-law walked toward me through a deeper section of water downstream.

When he was still about 20 yards away, a dark shadow shot through the water, right past my legs.

All I can say is it was trout shaped, and it was well over 20 inches.

Penns Creek, like many others across the state, certainly has all the ingredients to grow a wild brown trout that large.

And we owe it all to a batch of eggs delivered to Pennsylvania from Germany 140 years ago.

P.J. Reilly is an LNP | LancasterOnline outdoors writer. Email him at preilly@lnpnews.com.

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