monster trout.

[rrt]

You guys are a lot better big trout fishermen than I am. I consider 18" trout big ones, and 20" trout are special. I have caught stockers up to 28" and a wild brown of 24", but these have been really rare fish for me. Even when I did some night fishing, 20" was about the best I could manage. You guys who catch fish like this regularly are a special group, IMO.

 

[krayfish]

Agree with most info so far. There very well might be 20" and larger browns right by you or in the waters you fish. If you are out mid-day....you'll never see them. Most have transitioned to nocturnal / hard food feeders. Those big boys hide in log jams, under cut banks or hug the bottom in the deepest pools. Low light (after sunset or 90 minutes before sunrise) will greatly improve your odds. Crappy weather is typically big brown weather (cold, overcast, rain). No magic fly, no magic water or easy answers. You have to try, experiment, put in your time and they will come. Some waters will help you improve the chances as the provide habitat that draws big fish or hold larger numbers of fish over 20". There are more of them out there than you probably realize and persistence will put a 20"-24" in your net. There are a few times and places that will give up 20"+ fish on dries or nymphs but those are rare. It becomes a streamer game and a good 6-7 weight will help you get the job done. Don't be surprised if you spend 3 days covering 5 miles of water just to get 1 take. It's not like you will be nailing one after another doing this type of angling. Enjoy the journey just as much as the trophy at the end of the journey.

 

[thesmayway]

I'm on a similar goal of a 20"+ wild brown. last yeari caught a 19.5" and Saturday a 17" Out of a stream you could hop across. i think they get big eating natives. this is probably more of the exception but that's where I'm hunting.

 

[Mike]

With only 1.5 percent of the wild brown trout in Pa being 16 inches long and longer (not including Erie tribs, Kinzua tail-race, Yough, Lehigh R, Delaware R), random sampling is not going to cut it. To have the best chance of catching large BT it would be best to accept that they are clumped in their distribution. Waters that have produced big fish in the past will tend to do so again because of the physical habitat, forage base, and probable limited competition. They also tend to be of at least moderate fertility, although not exclusively so.

A proxy for limited competition is less than ideal habitat for an abundance of trout, but fair to good habitat for large trout. Where good big fish habitat is present but forage is limited there may be many "holes" that are vacant at any one point in time because there are less big fish than the physical habitat would suggest. Large fish may have to move some surprising distances on a frequent basis in order to find appropriate sizes or abundance a of forage for maintenance and growth. Anglers unfamiliar with the forage situation in a given stream may mistake the lack of larger fish in good habitat for the effects of harvest or poaching.

Heavy harvest of smaller fish may help by removing competition for limited forage or habitat. That harvest may be associated with stocking and high fishing pressure. Stocking and high fishing pressure may not harm the big fish population perhaps due to the behavior of large trout, just as it did not in Logan Branch during its prime and as it does not appear to do in a trib to the Lehigh that consistently produces large browns..

Fast growth rates may also be helpful in that there is less time exposure to factors that result in natural mortality before fish achieve a larger size. However, that has to be weighed against the general observation in fisheries that fast growing fish are shorter lived. Nevertheless, fast growing fish are robust fish and their high fat content aids these fish in overwinter survival.

Given the stockpiling of mid-size or smaller fish that occurs in limestoners under C&R regs, I would avoid most C&R areas. I said most, not all. Fishing for big trout is often better outside of and downstream from the C&R stretches, such as in the Letort and Codorus. As for Big Spring, it is a marginal brown trout stream, but it has produced some very large browns despite the relatively small Brown trout population.

 

[outsider]

Mike (and others), a suggestion:

Please break up your responses into paragraphs. My old eyes and ADD get lost in long responses without paragraph breaks. I would appreciate it, others may as well.

 

[Mike]

You were too quick. I was breaking it down into paragraphs at the end, but had to submit what I had already written to avoid the timing out problem.

 

[Brown71]

A lot of these replies are sound information, lots of good advice. I am also like Night Stalker, my Dad and I do the majority of our fishing focusing on big trout.

The best I can tell you is simply go where the big ones are. You cant catch them if they aren't there. MANY waters hold browns over 5 pounds that is for sure.

I have gotten several large browns from Yough River and many more from a few local limestone streams, one that is very well known. The limestoner has given up 2 over 10 pounds in fact and many, many 5 plus.

Do you homework and I bet you will find what you are looking for. Also, always remember the truly big trout are most vulnerable ONE time of the year, and its not a hatch. Its the fall. The big boys leave their lairs looking for spawning water and streams that all year seem void of big fish suddenly have 20"+ fish seemingly all over.

 

[Chaz]

The Delaware River probably produces the big trout on the most consistent basis, that being said it's out of you Geo area. I'd look for a stream that flows into a reservoir that has trout in it that migrate to streams in the fall. I'm not very familiar with much of the southern tier, other than brookie streams, but every time I find large brookies, that fish over 12 inches, it's in streams that flow into reservoirs and some of those brookies are 3 pounds, which would be in the 18 inch range for a brookie.

 

[Brown71]

Chaz, I second that about streams flowing into reservoirs. There is many more of these across PA that hold Lake Run trout, definitely a great thing to keep your eye out for. I know of a few with some very nice browns.

 

[pcray1231]

Approaches (aside from Erie and stocked or fed fish):

1. Big Rivers. Allegheny Tailwaters. Delaware. Lehigh. You could add the Yough, Clarion, etc. in there.

2. Limestoners. Generally, there has to be some browns but the real trophies are usually where there's not a real strong population of them. Perhaps the stream has a strong wild brown population upstream, but downstream it begins to warm and becomes marginal. That marginal area is often where there's not many fish, but there are a few trophies.

3. They exist in smallish freestoners too. Can be like the limestoners, in marginal areas. Also occurs in streams that are primarily brookie streams. That super deep pool with the big rock undercut that you strangely never catch a brookie out of? Yep.

The constant seems to be that unless it's a huge waterway, trophy browns are NOT found in the same places where A LOT of browns are found. You are not after numbers. You are after a place where lots of food is found, but food is not the population limiting factor. Maybe holding water. Maybe water temp but there's a small spring where 1 or 2 fish can oversummer. Whatever it is, you have a situation where only a few fish can survive, but those that do have an abundant food chain virtually to themselves without competition.

The exceptions to the above are when it may not be a huge, rich waterway, but it's close to one. We said about Erie, the D, Allegheny, etc. Well, the TRIBS to those same waters can have em. Same goes for reservoirs.

In all cases, fish streamers at night or in high muddy water to structure. In smaller water you can often locate them in the daytime and then go back and target them at night.

On smaller waters, approach it like a bowhunter chasing a trophy buck. You're searching for a tiny subset of the population. Once found, you're patterning a specific animal, and then you set up an ambush.

 

[Tups]

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2835473-ed-shenk-s-fly-rod-trouting

http://www.flyfishersparadiseonline.com/product_p/b208.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Fishing-Trout-Final-Frontier/dp/0932558429

 

[mcneishm]

I would agree with the majority of the posts to set your sites on 20" fish. There are not a lot of them but enough that you do have a reasonable chance of catching one. Other than several browns in the 28"-29" range from the Salmon River, I have caught only one brown in 64 years that would approach the 5# mark. I have caught a fair number in the 20-21-22" range. I'll get maybe 2-3 a season; 4-5 if I'm really lucky.

That said, if you really want to pursue browns that are 5# or more, they exist but primarily in bigger water and water that's limestone or limestone influenced. Fish at night, like really at night, say 2-3 in the morning with big flies, buggers, sculpins, etc. A friend of mine who is a past master at catching big trout this way says your fly "must move water". He catches and has caught some of the biggest browns I have ever seen in PA so he must know something.

 

[captbugger]

Wow so much info. Fyi i have caught plenty of monster trout in my life time meaning over 20 in and maybe 4 were close to five pounds. Mike you make some very great points and since you really know my local area does th fs have what it takes to keep monsters like that?

 

[Mike]

I once lost a very large trout at dark in the E Br Antietam Ck in Waynesboro. it took a Rapala on the surface, but having surveyed that stream, I would say that fish was unusual for the stream, but that said you might find suitable habitat at additional spots along that general stretch of the stream. Having surveyed the special reg area on Falling Springs numerous times, I never saw a fish of the size that you seek, but perhaps the habitat is better there now and perhaps there is a lower density of trout, which would reduce competition. I never surveyed down through town where the stream was pretty degraded and perhaps warmed up, but if it holds it's temps and has an occasional deep hole, even under a bridge, you may be able to locate a larger specimen. If it is cool to the Conocheague, then there may be potential at times at its mouth if there is some deeper water there. Finally, I have never seen Waynesboro Res, but it had held a state record once or twice, so I was curious about its secret. There are others who know more about that general region than I do and you might want to contact my counterpart in the south central region for his opinion.

 

[Wild_Trouter]

If you are willing to come to Cumberland County...say Shippensburg, Carlisle, Camp Hill-you will have options. Having lived there for a number of years, Franklin County has a few streams, but things are better east and north of you. You also have Beaver Creek near Hagerstown,MD that harbors large specimens.

 

[Chaz]

The wild card is that not all browns switch to large prey and continue to take insects and small crustaceans which will not allow the brown to grow larger in the streams we have in PA. This is a genetic trait that all large brown exhibit. You can look at a lot of brown trout streams and find thousands of browns, but the biggest trout are in the 14 to 16 inch range, a nice trout, but not large.
Pine Creek is often producing large browns because the food base is huge, and it has cold water tributaries along it's 75 miles. Look for other streams like Pine Creek that transition to warm water, with cold water tributaries and you'll find big browns. And fish in the hour before sunset and through the night to an hour after sunrise.

 

[LongWader]

If you want to catch big browns consistently you need to go to waters that are known for producing good numbers of them. My best trophy brown hunting happens in larger rivers with large sanctuary holes downstream and when the big browns push upstream in the fall. If there are a lot of big browns they will often push up in large groups mostly large male or large female groups and they tend to stack up in big holes below large riffles and chutes where they rest and feed before they take on a new challenging piece of water in their push upstream. While resident fish can be extremely wary, these fresh fish pushing upstream are hungry, aggressive much easier to catch. It is an interesting fishing pattern and you can cover 5 or 6 big hole and find nothing and then find one hole where there seem to be lots of big browns. Low light is best, but with these fresh hungry fish it is not always necessary. These fish do not feed a lot when there moving/migrating, but when the stop and rest they put on the feed bag trying to get into spawning condition. They generally won't move from their resting place for small stuff, but will pounce on a large offering that will give them a lot of gain for minimal effort.