Wildlife Watching Wednesday: Great Lakes Brown Trout
By: Tom Berg
Brown trout are one of the three main species of trout living in Lake Michigan: including brown trout, lake trout and rainbow trout (steelhead). During the winter and early spring months when the weather is cold, brown trout are one of the easiest of the three species to catch out on the big lake.
That’s not to say brown trout are easy to catch, though; especially big brown trout. Large brown trout are wary and wily, and sometimes the biggest individuals only seem to feed under cover of darkness when most fishermen are in bed. Typical brown trout weigh 2-4 pounds, but the really big ones can weigh 10-20 pounds or more. The largest brown trout ever caught from Lake Michigan weighed more than 41 pounds! It was caught from the Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan.
The majority of Lake Michigan brown trout are usually silver-colored and are not brown at all. Like most Great Lakes trout and salmon, brown trout have silvery sides and a white belly, and their sides are marked with many black spots. They do turn brown in color during spawning season, however, or if they happen to be living in a creek or river which empties into Lake Michigan.
The states bordering Lake Michigan (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan) stock fingerling brown trout into the lake every year to keep local populations strong. Brown trout tend to be home-bodies and stay fairly close to their stocking sites, so the state DNR biologists stock the fish in a variety of locations to allow access to them by the maximum number of fishermen.
Brown trout are very efficient predators, and once they reach 12-15 inches in size their diet consists mainly of other fish. Alewives, shad, smelt, shiners, gobies, baby perch and other small fish are all on the menu for hungry brown trout. So if you are interested in fishing for brown trout, use a bait or artificial lure that looks like a small fish!
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