16 States, 16 Brook Trout

Written by Amanda Hoffner

If you know me, you know I love brook trout. I grew up fishing for them on the

Kittatinny ridge of the Appalachians in Northeastern Pennsylvania and nothing makes me feel like home quite like the those rhododendron lined streams. They are my biggest passion and these natives have lead me to want to explore the United States in search of other native species in their native range.

Looking back through my tenkara journey, I have been fishing consistently year round with a tenkara rod in these mountains since 2022 and I figured I would make some goals for myself. One of them being to catch a brook trout on a tenkara rod in every state of their native range on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. That would be 16 states in total and turned out to be a three year venture for me. Most recently, I chased them with my friend Jacob in West Virginia.

Northern States

I’ve decided to break this article into two sections. First up, I will post the brook

trout caught from Pennsylvania to Maine. It is interesting to see them all together in one setting and I have enjoyed looking through the pictures of each fish from different states.

With that being said, throughout each states, you can see different colorations

and characteristics shine through from fish in certain streams. I am not a fish

biologist by any means, but they visually appear to be unique to each stream and/or section of the state in terms of physical characteristics. It would be interesting to see a study done from certain streams of each state to see if there are subsets of Northern strain species. I did not post but one fish but each state, but maybe in the future I will post more pictures from each state to show you what I mean.

Also, I obviously caught more fish from each state than one, but these were the

ones from each state that I thought were interesting enough to showcase here. Without giving away the stream name, I have given the month, year, and some sort of location identification for each fish in its caption.

Southern States

Continuing to following the Appalachian mountains South from Maryland towards Georgia, which is the most Southern state with native brook trout in its native range, I initially began fishing South of Pennsylvania in North Carolina. I ended up going to my first tenkara camp out in Bryson City, NC in 2022 and was able to link up with locals and catch my first southern strain brook trout. Thank you Don Lux for my first Southern strain brook trout! I was immediately HOOKED! Ever since then, I moved to the Carolinas and have been making my way around the East coast mountains catching fish from 2022 to now.

For these specific fish, you will note the obvious identifying characteristics of

these wild and native fish, like the vermiculation on the dorsal aspect and the blue halos around red and orange dots on their flanks, that make a brook trout a brook trout. However, you will see that most off these particular fish have several more blue halos, have lighter blue halos, and have a lighter and softer background behind the parr marks that really give these stream gems a different vibe from their Northern strain relatives. Locals will call these specks, I guess this rings true with their obviously speckled up sides.

Although I have completed this goal of mine, I will continue to search for and hunt these native gems from the oldest mountain range in North America throughout my lifetime. These mountains will always be what I call home and i will relish and dream of the days I get to spend in the cool valleys, gaps, ravines, hollows, and coves.

I looking forward to exploring other mountain ranges in the United States in the coming years. Cheers to 16 fish in 16 states!