Forney Creek Mystery Brookie

[pineman19]

I agree! Looks like a bow till you look close at the head and the fin colors. Great looking fish either way!


Neal

[Scott H.]

Could that last one be a cross between a rainbow and a brown?

Is that gentetically possible?

Any biologists out there know?

Scott

[bugg]

Looks like that brown probably came up from the lake.

[fcfly]

I had a similar experience a few years
back in that same location with a 12" brookie. Actually I think
I caught the same fish twice. I caught it in Forney Creek
where the tunnel to nowhere trail connects to Forney Creek trail.
We fished Forney up to the bridge then came back down to
our starting place where I again caught a fish that looked like the one I had caught that morning.

If you're from Bryson City you probably know Lester (proprietor
of the junk/gun/fly store there on the main drag). He says
there is a remnant population of Northern variety Brookies
that were stocked in the 60's-70's in the Park (mainly on
the Carolina side).

I don't think they are Brownies up from the lake but their
colors are different and they get bigger than Southern Appalachian
Variety Brookies.

[Jim Casada]

I refuse to call mountain trout brookies (to a son of the Smokies specks, speckled trout, natives, or mountain trout are all acceptable), but once past that barrier, here are some thoughts on your mystery fish. First, Forney Creek holds plenty of fish somewhat bigger than those of your experience. Any rainbow over about 11 inches is esceptional (but that's true pretty much everywhere in the Park except Abrams creek), but Foreny holds lots of 'em in the 7-11-inc range, not tomention browns that can run appreciably bigger.
While the coloration on the speck you show might seem a bit iffy, I've seen them with very similar coloration any number of times over my almost 60 years of fishing in the Park. They become much more brilliant as spawning season approaches, and I have no doubt whatsoever that habitat conditions affect color. For example, rainbows in Noland Creek are very vivid indeed, while the browns in Slickrock Creek have the brightest red spots of any I've seen anywhere.
As for the brown, it is almost certainly a lake-run fish which has been in deeper water (a fine example of how habitat affects coloration). As for Lester (and I'm a native of Bryson City), I wouldn't put a lot of faith in his pronouncements. I suspect he has spent very little if any time on trout waters, inside the Park or out, in the last two decades. I don't think any of the northern strain stocked in the Park survived to reproduce on the N. C. side, although there is that possibility in one and possibly two streams on the Tennessee side. Jim Casada