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“Going to a lake that is overpopulated with 6″-8″ Eastern Brooktrout. I have been informed by knowledgeable individuals it is unlikely to be any trout much larger than that. Just wishful thinking on my part, but why isn't there just one 12″ trout in one of these lakes with a zillion 6″-8″ Eastern Brooktrout. How would I fish for that one? I don't understand and besides I'm slow and Hardheaded!”
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The fish end up reaching a sort of steady state. There are so many fish in the lake that every niche is filled and the food supply has been cropped down. Every time you eliminate a fish, a young one comes in and takes its place.
Typically, trout sexually mature at age 3. Up until that point all food they take in goes to growth. Once they sexually mature all nutrition starts going to gamete production. If there is excess, above what is needed to produce eggs or sperm, then it will go into growth. In lakes with too many fish there just isn’t enough food for growth. That’s why they quickly shoot up to that 6-8″ size and then basically stop growing.
Only once have I seen a lake with a stunted population where a fish turned to eating fry and grew larger then the other fish in the lake. That was in a Montana lake where the fish were stunting at 10-12″ instead of the 6-8″ we typically get. The lake had a lot of food, but there were still too many fish and they were showing the typical large head and skinny body associated with stunting. I caught one 16 incher that was full of fry. When the fish can only get to 6-8″ they don’t get big enough to turn to eating fry as an important part of their diet as that one had and that’s why you don’t find any lunkers.
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“Many years ago we noticed that an alpine lake with large trout had many crayfish or crawdads in it. So we took a “bunch” of these crawdads over to a nearby lake which was overpopulated with eastern brook trout. In the following years, it seemed that the eastern brook population in the nearby lake decreased and fish were considerably larger. We wondered if the increase in fish size was due to the trout feeding on the crawdads or due to the crawdads eating many of the eastern brook trout spawned eggs.”
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“This is info from many years ago….still married to the ex I wished lived in Texas. Stayed a night at Grand Lake (ONP), fishing the evening of arrival and again the next morning, catching many skinny, 6-8 inch EB. Found a raft someone had constructed still floating and was large enough to stand on. So I'm polling around, casting and catching an occasional fish when I spook a large fish. Happened again later when I reached another section of the lake. My guess, clouded by youthful optimism and many year's passage is they were 18 inch fish. Never been back to try the EB minnow imitations, either wet flies or spoons to try to catch the relative monsters. My guess is that these few fish switched to eating EB young and were quite successful at it. Since Brian says this usually doesn't happen, I wonder why sometimes it does? One mechanism I imagine is some sort of food intake boost that gets just a few trout past some size threshold allowing them to start eating the young ones. Maybe a severe winter kill leaving all the nutrients for a few surviving fish to grow large enough to later eat their young….or an influx of food only a few fish take advantage of (crawdads?)….or some designer drug injected or placed inside a few fish that inhibits reproduction for a few years allowing growth past critical size. Whatcha think?”
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One of these lakes I am going to is Cheval Lake that is very lightly fished but has been reported to be overpopulated with 6″-8″ EBs. I’ll be there for several days so I will report back what I find. Honestly, I think Brian is correct but we will see. I hope to spend some time just observing before any fish get spooked.
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“Hi Brian,^^I exchanged some email with you back in early April about Cheval Lake in Eagle Cap. The trip is still on. I'm only taking spinning gear but I am taking a lot of flies in addition to lures. Is there a good description available somewhere on the ways to rig a float and trailing fly? Since April those 6″-8″ EBs probably have grown at least a couple of inches don't you think? :D”
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“There are two kinds of bubbles I like, the slip bubble and the teardrop shaped bubble. The teardrop bubble has an eyelet at each end. I clip one end to a snap swivel at the end of my line and tie two pound leader to the other end. I generally make the leader 2 to 3 feet long. The bubble can face either way depending on what you want to do. If the heavy end of the bubble is facing toward the fly it will tangle a lot less when you are casting. If the heavy end faces toward your rod the bubble will make a swimming motion in the water which can be especially useful if you want action on the fly and you are trolling it behind a boat. I generally fish it so the heavy end faces toward the fly because I like to control the action on the fly, and I don't like tangles. You can bring the fly in slowly, with small jerks, or by popping your bubble with a heavy rod twitch. I recall that the day I fished Cheval Lake the fish wanted the fly retrieved slowly with no action. I can't remember when to pay my bills, don't ask me how I remember that detail of what the fish liked in an obscure lake I fished in 1988. ^^^^The slip bubble is oval shaped with a hollow tube running through the middle. The line is passed through the tube and a snap swivel tied onto the end of the line with 2 lb leader tied to the swivel. When a fish hits the fly with this setup the line is supposed to be able to slide through the bubble. These bubble are weighted by half filling them with water, or completely filling them if you want the bubble to sink. I caught a nice 17″ RB a couple weeks ago with a sunken bubble and Wolley Bugger. Again, you can impart action to the fly as with the teardrop bubble.”
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