Brook Trout

A cold-water char with a painted flank that lives in a few high lakes and streams, is rarely fished for on purpose, and is remembered by everyone who has caught one.

Family

Salmonidae

Origin

Introduced

Spawns

Mar–Aug (Tasmania)

Facts from

Tasmania Inland Fisheries Service — fish fact sheet series ↗

The brook trout is not a trout. It is a char, a cousin from the cold lakes and spring creeks of eastern North America, and it wears the family colours: a dark olive back covered in pale, worm-like squiggles, a flank scattered with red spots each sitting in a blue halo, a belly that flushes orange in autumn, and lower fins edged in a white so clean it looks painted on. Nothing else in Australian fresh water looks like it. It is also, by a long way, the least common of the country’s four trout and salmon, and the least likely to have been caught on purpose.

That is the honest shape of the fishing. NSW DPIRD’s Snowy Mountains guide says brook trout favour very cold water and are found in only a handful of the region’s higher streams and lakes, that they are rarely a specific target, and that most are taken as bycatch by anglers fishing for brown and rainbow trout. An occasional wild fish turns up in a mountain stream, but nearly all of them, like all the Atlantic salmon, began in a hatchery. In Tasmania the Inland Fisheries Service can name the waters: Clarence Lagoon, the only water in the Western Lakes that holds them; Lake Plimsoll and Lake Selina on the west coast, where stocking sustains the population; and Bronte Lagoon downstream of Clarence, where one is occasionally caught. The stocking record shows Lake Plimsoll receiving brook trout in most years since 2011, Lake Jindabyne and Three Mile Dam in the Snowy Mountains receiving them every year since 2021, and Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra receiving a large release in the mid-1970s that did not persist.

So if you want one, go where they are. Clarence Lagoon in the Western Lakes is the wild-feeling fishery, and the Inland Fisheries Service’s advice for it is unromantic: wet flies or hard-bodied lures fished in rough, cold weather are the most likely way to catch its brook trout, from the rocky eastern and southern shores. Lake Plimsoll is the stocked west-coast water. In the Snowy Mountains, fish the lake margins and the cold tributary mouths of Jindabyne and Three Mile Dam with the same flies you would fish for a rainbow, and treat a brook trout as the day’s bonus.

The quick read

A brook trout eats like a rainbow and holds like a brown. It wants the coldest water in the system, it feeds readily on whatever is there, and it is not the wariest fish in the lake. The Inland Fisheries Service gives its diet as crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic and terrestrial insects and small fish, which is to say everything, and its habitat as most of what a lake and the fresh reaches of a river offer. Find cold water in a lake that is known to hold them, fish a wet fly or a nymph with some confidence, and you have done what can be done. The Western Lakes guide carries Clarence Lagoon; the Snowy Mountains guide carries the mainland waters.

Range in Australia

Tiny, and entirely stocked or descended from stocking. Tasmania holds the waters where a brook trout is a reasonable expectation rather than a surprise: Clarence Lagoon and Bronte Lagoon on the Central Plateau, Lake Plimsoll and Lake Selina on the west coast. In New South Wales the species is confined to a few high, cold lakes and streams in the Snowy Mountains, with Lake Jindabyne and Three Mile Dam carrying a current stocking programme. The Australian Capital Territory tried them in Lake Burley Griffin in the 1970s. Victoria’s record on file is a short run of releases into Lake Purrumbete in 2016 and 2017. Elsewhere a brook trout is a rumour; one Blue Mountains guide allows that a dam there may hold a small number, and that is as firm as it gets.

Do not plan a trip around a brook trout anywhere it is not named above. Plan the trip around the browns and rainbows and be pleased.

Size and what counts as a good fish

Most Australian brook trout are small, a stocked fish of a few hundred grams to a kilogram, and a fish over a kilogram from a wild-feeling water such as Clarence Lagoon is a very good one. The big fish of the North American lakes do not happen here because the water that suits the species is scarce and the fish are few. The measure of a good brook trout in this country is not weight. It is the colour on it, and a fish in full autumn dress, orange-bellied and white-finned, is worth the photograph whatever it weighs.

Habitat and behaviour

Cold water first, colder than a brown or a rainbow needs. NSW DPIRD notes that brook trout struggle with warm summer water, which is why they persist only in the highest and coldest lakes and streams, and why the stocked fish in a lowland water are a spring-to-early-summer fishery at best. Within a cold water they use most of it. The Inland Fisheries Service describes Clarence Lagoon’s rocky eastern and southern shores as the lure and fly water and its marshy northern end as good trout habitat that needs careful wading on soft sediment, and a brook trout will be found in both.

They feed opportunistically and, compared with a brown, without much guile. Insects, crustaceans and small fish are all taken; on a highland lake that means the same midges, mudeyes, beetles and galaxias the browns are eating. A brook trout will follow a wet fly and take it in cold, rough conditions when nothing else is moving, which is why the Tasmanian advice for Clarence Lagoon is the wet fly in bad weather.

In very clear, cold water at height, look for the biggest fish along the bottom of the deepest channels, behind big boulders and below small cascades and falls. In pocket-water brook trout rivers, a stealthy read of the water matters more than the fly. The species has struggled here compared with the more adaptable browns and rainbows, and a small number of Snowy Mountains high-country streams hold it alongside them.

A reliable first outfit

The same outfit as for any highland lake. A five or six weight rod of nine feet, a floating line and an intermediate, a leader of around three and a half metres tapering to 3X. Fish a fur fly, a Yeti or a black Woolly Bugger on the point and a nymph on a dropper, and work the rocky shores with a steady retrieve; on a boat, the loch-style drift covers a lake such as Plimsoll well. When fish are rising, a Red Tag or a small dun pattern is taken as readily as by any trout. On a Snowy Mountains lake, fish the tributary mouths and the cold margins early in the season with the same flies you carry for rainbows.

Spawning season

Brook trout spawn in autumn and winter, and the Inland Fisheries Service describes fish migrating upstream to gravel-bottomed stretches of river to do it. In a stocked lake with no suitable inflow they cannot reproduce, which is why those populations depend on continued stocking and why a wild-feeling population such as Clarence Lagoon’s is worth protecting. Fish gathered on shallow gravel in the cold months are spawning, not feeding; leave them.

Rules that apply

Tasmania sets a daily bag limit of two brook trout in inland waters, under the Inland Fisheries Act, and that limit applies even where a lake’s overall bag is larger; check the current Inland Fishing Code for the water you are on, because seasons and gear rules vary by water. In New South Wales brook trout are covered by the general trout rules: the statewide closed season in trout streams from the end of the June long weekend to the start of the October long weekend, and bag and size limits that depend on how a water is classified. No water-specific brook trout rule was found for New South Wales or the ACT beyond those general trout provisions; check the current NSW DPIRD freshwater guide before you fish.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a Brook Trout or a Brown Trout?

Look at the back and the fins. A brook trout has pale, wavy, worm-like markings over a dark olive back and dorsal fin, and its pectoral, pelvic and anal fins carry a crisp white leading edge backed by a black line. Its flank spots are red or pink inside a pale blue halo, on a background of paler spots. A brown trout has larger dark and red spots on a lighter flank, no white edges to the fins and no squiggles on the back. A brook trout’s tail is nearly square; a brown’s is slightly forked.

Why are there so few of them?

Water temperature. Brook trout need water colder than most Australian trout water gets in summer, so they survive only in the highest lakes and streams, and even there they rarely spawn successfully. Nearly every population depends on stocking, and stocking has been small and intermittent compared with browns and rainbows.

Can I keep one?

In Tasmania, two a day in inland waters. In New South Wales they count under the general trout bag and size limits for the water’s classification, and the trout streams are closed through winter. Check the current rules for your water before you fish; this page is not the synopsis.