30" Browns

B

Brown71

Active member
Joined
May 15, 2013
Messages
285
After reading another post discussing a place with a reputation of producing browns of 28" to 30", it got me curious how many of the bruisers this size are caught.

As I stated in other posts, I love hunting big fish, and there is way more places that these fish exist than what most think. But, how many actually are caught? They get that big for a reason.

How many of you have landed a brown at 30" or more from a non great lakes trib stream? If so, many? How about others close to that mark 28" to 30"?

Don't care if you caught it spin fishing or fly-fishing. Just interested to hear others stories about this class of fish. Obviously, I don't expect nor am asking anyone to post specifically the waters where they caught their big fish.

I myself have literally devoted most of my fishing to hunting larger fish locally, and that being said, I have only got 1 over the 30" mark. In addition to that fish, I have gotten 2 at 29" and a few more 28"'s. The largest came from a well known limestoner, but some of the others were honestly from places that fly WAY under the radar.



 
Hard to say how many of them are actually out there. Your point of, "they didn't get that big on accident" is valid. My landed 30" browns are all lake runs. I have 2 24" fish from the river in the other thread and hooked and lost several much larger. I will just say that i love fishing places where the potential exists. I fish large streamers to target large fish, but at the end of the day….the fish choose you, you don't choose them.
 
Fish over 30" are very rare.
In over thirty years of fly fishing in PA I have never seen what I would consider an honest 30" brown. However, they do exist - there have been a handful of fish in the 30"+ class that have come out of the Cumberland Valley streams over the years (including one a couple years ago). To the extent that they exist in PA......I'm certain it's mostly in big, deep, cold reservoirs. I'll bet there are a good few swimming around in Raystowm, Alleheny Res, and Wallenpaupack. You could spend a lifetime of fishing streams in PA and never see one.
 
My biggest browns so far, were a few in the 24" range - caught at the delaware and clarion rivers. That's as close as I've come.
 
I've caught a few browns around 20+ inch range but the biggest trout I have ever caught around here was a 24 1/2" rainbow(measured). My old lady caught a rainbow in a local resivior that was definetly close to that 30" mark. We were fishing out of our kayaks in early June and she yells " I got a big one!" I'm thinking she's got a nice bass or something but I get over there and she's got the biggest rainbow I've ever seen in person. Tried to land it in my little trout net, wasn't happening. It got loose as I was trying to land it with my hands. But me and her both got a good look at it and it was definitely a massive female rainbow. It must've just finished spawning recently because her belly was torn up and pink. Obviously not a brown or stream bred but she had to have been in there for a couple years to get that big. But anyway I think they have a much better chance in a large lake or resivior than they do in a stream or river. Look at some of the browns that come out of the Great Lakes. If you look at the IGFA records most if not all of the record trout come out of large lakes.
 
Thread is useless without pics. Lol.
 
I am stuck at 21" for wild browns, landing six in that size range in my lifetime so far. One person that my brother knew claims to have caught a 30" brown out of one of the streams that yielded one of my 21"ers but you know that drill - I know someone who knows someone who caught a 30" brown as big as his arm out of there, and that guy doesn't lie :)

I do think that low 20's browns are more common than we think, but I do not think that 30" browns are common at all. You don't see them listed in PFBC surveys. The streams they are in are probably as you describe - they fly under the radar, but they also probably only have one of such class of fish, a true river (or small stream) monster.
 
I fish a stream regularly that I know has 30 inch wild browns. It does not have a lake either. My biggest is 24 out of this stream and i usually catch at least one every time i fish there in the 20-22inch range. I watched my cousin catch 2-25's. I have also witnessed another friend catch a 27 incher there.
 
I would think that Salmonid has it about right - most medium sized streams probably have 22-24" fish that you'll never see in daylight, but 30" is rare anywhere where wild trout live.

I'd think you'd be looking at fish that are almost completely nocturnal who mostly feed on crayfish, sculpins, chubs, shiners and trout parr, and live in what Charlie Brooks called a bomb shelter near deep water.

Reading through the old literature it seems many of the monsters in the old days came from the deep pools below junctions at night, or below dams, weirs or hatchery gates.

The fish have to be able to safely access a constant stream of protein otherwise they'll just drop down to a larger river or lake or even run to the sea to meet their needs, or they'd just probably get caught by a predator like us.

Aaron Jasper seems to write a lot about east coast big brownies, it migh be worth reading his articles on the Croton etc.





 
I missed the 30 inch mark by about 1/2 an inch back in 2004 out of Pine not far downstream from Slate. I've had a few in the 27-28 range and a ton from 22-25. My biggest that I'm pretty sure was wild was about 23. I haven't chased big fish lately, but there was a time when it was the absolute focus of my fishing time.

Boyer
 
I know it's not PA, but this guy is on the wvangler site and consistantly catches large browns from small streams. He's got this fish on Moldy Chum this month that he taped at 27". I think mid 20's are doable on a regular basis as this guy continually does it, but that 30" mark is an old old fish and pretty rare. It takes a great food source, good cover and a lot of luck for a fish to reach that size as well as good genes.


http://www.moldychum.com/home-old/2013/10/27/oct-sotm-entry-west-virginia-brown.html

 
I've never caught any trout near the 30" mark, and I probably never will.

I'm fine with that.
 
My largest has been 28.5" Brown caught/released April Fools Day 2011. Cumberland Valley. I have caught many trout 20" and over in the region. This takes commitment, tons of stream time, year round effort and a fool to do it. I admit that most of them were caught not on a fly...but instead on other artificials. This is changing as I have been posting (for example the 21"er I posted tonight on the fish photos). Once you learn the behaviors and locations of habitat that support larger fish (the 20-26") the next desired goal would be to focus on the magical 30" mark.

I have only seen the one photo/story of a 32.5" brown in big spring creek in Newville. The state lists biggest fish of the year on their site and most of them are from lakes...it is worth a look.
 

Largest trout I've caught was 25.5 inches in the trophy section of Penns. For sure trout 30 + in Penn's have had trout take the line out like a salmon no chance to hold them at all pure unreal power.
 
I'm curious - only the OP has laid claim to actually catching a 30" stream brown. However, several posters claim to have fished waters that hold 30"+ trout, often having hooked and lost them ;-)

How do you know these are 30"+ fish? Does the mystique of such fish possibly existing add a few inches to the actual length of the fish? Are 30" browns the mountain lions of the water?
 
Now this thread is funny. So where do these 30" fish show up on the PFBC electro-shocking surveys they do all across the state?

Besides, I'll start believing there are 30" fish, when I start to see pics of actual 25" trout. Taped.

Too funny
 
Had 2 in the 26+ range (Delaware and Spring). Would have cracked the 30" barrier in "the ditch" back on the 80's more than once but the gear couldn't take what the fish was dealing out.
 
vcregular wrote:
Now this thread is funny. So where do these 30" fish show up on the PFBC electro-shocking surveys they do all across the state?

Besides, I'll start believing there are 30" fish, when I start to see pics of actual 25" trout. Taped.

Too funny

Yeah. Based on the lengths assigned to some of the fish I've seen in photos on this forum there are quite a few posters whose estimating skills are way off. Maybe I'm just bitter because I'm still trying to hit the 20" mark on a wild trout. :-(
 
Mcsneak,
If you have not hit the 20inch mark on wild trout, you are not trying to. If you want one, you let me know.
 
Back
Top