In the fall of 2007, Wild South hosted a brook trout summit on the campus of Asheville-Buncombe Technical College.  The event brought together over sixty participants representing state and federal agencies, conservation organizations, anglers, and private landowners all with a stake in protecting the remaining brook trout habitat.  Its goal was to create a forum for discussion to determine how collaboration could occur to preserve and restore this imperiled species across its range in western North Carolina.  The summit ultimately spurred the creation of a Brook Trout Certification Program that publicly recognizes landowners that actively work to protect native brook trout.

Physical Description

Brook trout, not a “true trout” but rather a species of char, are colored green to brown with a distinctive marbled pattern (called vermiculations) of lighter shades across the flanks and back and extending at least to the dorsal fin, and often to the tail.  Distinctive sprinklings of red dots, surrounded by blue haloes, occur along the fish’s flank.  The belly and lower fins are reddish in color, the latter with white leading edges. Often the belly, particularly of the males, becomes very red or orange when the fish are spawning.  This species generally reaches an average length of 10 to 26 in (33 in recorded maximum) and weighs from 11 oz to 7 lb (14 lb recorded maximum).  Brook trout can live up to at least seven years in the wild with an average lifespan of around four years.

Distribution & Habitat

Brook trout live in streams, creeks, rivers, lakes and spring ponds.  This fish requires exceptional water quality, as they are rather sensitive to poor oxygenation, pollution, and changes in pH due to factors such as acid deposition.  They are native to much of the eastern North America, from Georgia to Canada, although they have been extirpated from much of their original range.  Brook trout are the Southeast’s only native trout species.

Life History and Diet

Brook Trout eat a wide variety of prey including crustaceans, frogs and other amphibians, insects, mollusks, other smaller fish, and even some small aquatic mammals.  They spawn in the late summer or early fall.  The female constructs a depression in a location in the streambed where groundwater percolates upward through the gravel.  One or more males approach the female, fertilizing the eggs as the female expresses them.  After fertilization, the female buries the eggs in a small gravel mound out of which the fry will hatch in approximately 100 days.

Extinction Pressure

Due to the brook trout’s need for cold, clear, pollution free, well-oxygenated water, this species has been extirpated from much of its original range.  Native brook trout were experiencing local extinctions as early as the late 1800’s due to land development, forest clear-cutting, and industrial pollution.  These issues have only increased in magnitude over the past century causing great declines in brook trout population. Introduced fish species, such as brown and rainbow trout, have replaced the brook trout over much of its native range where its habitat has been marginalized.  Native species, such as smallmouth bass and perch, are also known to outcompete brook trout when populations are stressed by overharvest or environmental degradation.  In the past few decades, acid deposition has resulted in pH levels too low to support brook trout in all but the highest headwaters of some Appalachian streams and creeks.  A subspecies of brook trout in Canada known as the aurora trout was extirpated from the wild due to the alteration of stream pH by acid rain.

Conservation Status

Although brook trout are not listed as endangered at the federal or state level, the species has experienced alarming declines across its entire distribution over the past century.  In North Carolina and Tennessee, this fish has been extirpated from over 35% of the sub-watersheds (113 in total with 95 in NC) it historically inhabited.  Populations of brook trout in Georgia and South Carolina have been decimated, as the species inhabits only a quarter of their original range.  Only one sub-watershed in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park is considered to have an intact population.  In this region, rainbow and brown trout and habitat destruction due to urbanization are considered the largest threats to native brook trout populations.