Fishing tips & tactics

How to catch Brook Trout

Salvelinus fontinalis

Brook Trout illustration from the Bump Board app

Bump Board's tactics library for Brook Trout — where to fish, what to tie on and how to fish it, season by season. In the app, these tips adapt live to the weather, the front and the light.

Brook Trout — Fall

Where to fish

  • Autumn is the spawning movement: in the great Quebec lake country the pattern is famous — through summer the giants stay in the cool spring-fed depths, then in late August they descend into the outlet river.
  • Autumn is the spawning movement: from September into November the fish move up nearly to the sources of the spring brooks, preferring fast water over gravel. In late August they descend into the outlet river, and through late August and all of September big fish rise freely to ordinary trout flies there. Note the old teaching: in the spawning season the fish take no food at all — fish the feeders at the edges of the movement, and the pools they rest in.
  • On the Nipigon pattern: the best fishing of the year runs mid-July through August and September, at the foot of the falls and chutes — excellent fishing at the foot of all of them.

What to tie on

  • Streamers for the lake fish: Gray Ghost, Supervisor, Black Ghost, and the Colonel Bates — Stevens's pattern recorded as successful particularly in stained water.
  • Ordinary trout flies, fished in the river, take the big autumn fish — the standard cast of the classics.
  • Trolling with the spoon, the phantom minnow or a dead-fish bait is very successful on the big lake fish in fall — they'll take a very large pike spoon.
  • On off days on the river, the phantom minnow usually does the work.

How to fish it

  • Fish the foot-of-falls pools and the outlet rivers with the full stealth rules — shadow and concussion discipline matters more with these fish the bigger they get. Dusk is coming into its own: feeding peaks as the dark gathers.

If it's still tough

  • On the days they won't rise in the river, the phantom minnow is the classic's own fallback. And remember the season's oddity — spawning fish fast; if a pool full of fish ignores everything, they may be spawners, and the feeders are in the next pool down.

Brook Trout — Cool

Where to fish

  • Brook trout are strictly cold water — native below 60 °F, ideal 35–55 °F — and the name says the address: fontinalis, 'living in springs.' In lakes, the spring-fed water and the mouths of cold tributaries. In warm weather the fishing moves to the mouths of streams.
  • Brook trout are strictly cold water — native below 60 °F, ideal 35–55 °F — and the name says the address: fontinalis, 'living in springs.' In streams, the deep pools and eddies where they can lie concealed under grassy banks or logs and see without being seen. In warm weather the fishing moves to the mouths of streams and the swift, aerated water.
  • On the big lakes the seasonal round runs: shallows and points as the water warms in June, the cool depths in the heat of summer, the pools again in September. Big lake fish live deep and feed under the surface — they are not surface feeders.

What to tie on

  • Match what is on the water — the books' first rule: study the insects along the stream and make up your cast accordingly. Small and plain beats large and gaudy on most streams; for educated fish, the smallest flies on No. 12–18 hooks, on gossamer leaders. The old standard cast: Professor, Queen of the Water, Grizzly King, the Drakes, Montreal, Silver Doctor, Coachman — and hackles.
  • For big lake fish, think smelt: the great Rangeley streamers — Carrie Stevens's Gray Ghost first, the Supervisor (tied to mimic the finger smelt), the Black Ghost — and Don Gapen's Muddler Minnow, invented in 1936 to imitate the slimy sculpin for the giant brook trout of the Nipigon River.
  • If they won't rise: 'fear not to use bait' — minnows, red worms, white grubs, grasshoppers. A dead bait must be fresh and sweet; brook trout will not eat carrion.

How to fish it

  • Stealth is the whole technique with this fish. No other fish is so affected by shadows: the shadow of your body, your raised rod, or your line across a quiet pool is instant alarm. Crawl to the pool noiselessly on all fours. Slide rather than step when you wade. It's concussion they hear — a voice doesn't disturb them, but a toe scratched on the boat bottom or a careless tread on the bank empties the pool.
  • Most trout are taken within 30 ft — long casts are seldom needed. Working a rise: cast a little short of it first, then a little further. Let flies fall lightly, and let a dry fly drift down into a foamy pool with the current now and then — that drift took one classic author's largest fish.
  • For big lake fish: cast a straight line, let the fly sink a foot or two, then draw it toward you with short pauses. From a boat at a brook mouth, cast toward the mouth and draw the flies slowly across the ripples — and where big fish are known, use one fly only.
  • Strike with the wrist alone, swiftly but delicately — swift because a trout ejects a fly in a fraction of a second (in rapids, instantaneously; in a quiet pool, the slow striker wins), delicate because the arm is never needed. And don't land a hooked fish hastily: most escapes are lost through undue haste.

If it's still tough

  • Clear, low water under bright skies is the books' hardest condition — the answer is more stealth and finer presentation, not a different lure. And fish unlikely water thoroughly: 'Never think that you know a brook until you have fished it thoroughly — the best trout are sometimes taken in the most unlikely spots.'

Brook Trout — Warm

Where to fish

  • The water is past what this fish calls home — above the mid-teens Celsius it's a relocation problem, not a tactics problem. Go where the cold is: the mouths of cold tributary streams and the spring-fed depths of the lake. Brook trout gather about springs in the bottoms of lakes and ponds in warm weather.
  • The water is past what this fish calls home — above the mid-teens Celsius it's a relocation problem, not a tactics problem. Go where the cold is: the mouths of cold tributary streams and the swift, aerated water.

What to tie on

  • At a cold tributary mouth, a fresh minnow is the classic bait; in the spring-fed lake shallows in spring, big char chase minnow shoals and a live minnow takes fish daily.
  • In swift water they tolerate more warmth than in sluggish water — fish the runs and riffles with streamers (the Gray Ghost, the Muddler) and small plain flies. At a cold tributary mouth, a fresh minnow is the classic bait.

How to fish it

  • All the stealth rules double in warm, clear, low water: crawl, slide, keep your shadow off the pool, cast short of the fish first. Warm water holds the wariest fish in the coldest corners — fish those corners like they're made of glass.

If it's still tough

  • If the home water is warm everywhere, the honest book answer is to travel to the cold: spring holes — brook trout gather about springs in the bottoms of lakes and ponds in warm weather. There is no presentation that fixes warm water for a brook trout.
  • If the home water is warm everywhere, the honest book answer is to travel to the cold: tributary mouths and high-gradient runs. There is no presentation that fixes warm water for a brook trout.

Brook Trout on the ice — Through the ice season

Where to fish

  • We have to be honest with you here: none of the brook trout books behind this app — and we read the classics cover to cover — covers fishing for them through the ice. There's no book-taught ice pattern for this species to pass on.

What to tie on

  • No ice lure for brook trout is book canon. Anything you read elsewhere about tip-ups and spoons for brookies is modern magazine material, not the books this app is built on — and the app won't dress it up as book teaching.

How to fish it

  • What the books do give you is the season around the ice: after ice-out, the fish aren't commonly taken until the water and the morning air are nearly the same temperature — and the early-spring trolling streamers earn their keep then, on fish hungry after a winter under the ice. If brook trout are the goal, that's the sourced season to plan for.

If it's still tough

  • For hard-water fishing, the honest move is to target the species the ice books actually cover — walleye, pike, perch, lake trout, burbot — and save the brook trout for the cold open water they're made for.

Manitoba Master Angler

A Brook Trout of 51 cm (20 in) or better qualifies for Manitoba's Master Angler Program.

Where Brook Trout live

7,391 waters in the Bump Board dataset hold Brook Trout. A selection:

Manitoba

Plus 63 more Manitoba waters — browse Manitoba lakes.

Ontario

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Nova Scotia

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Arizona

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Colorado

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Connecticut

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Iowa

Idaho

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Massachusetts

Maine

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Michigan

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Minnesota

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Montana

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New Hampshire

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New Mexico

Nevada

New York

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Oregon

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Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Utah

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Virginia

Vermont

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Washington

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Wyoming

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Alberta

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Saskatchewan