JimKennedy
Active member
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2016
- Messages
- 253
Only trout of the day, so my 2024 total stands at one.
Weird thing is, it appears to be a wild rainbow. There’s a little population of Jurassic Park wild rainbows for about a mile below prettyboy dam in the really cold water area. It has kind of come about as a result of regular stocked rainbows going through the motions of spawning.
Thing is, modern stocked rainbows in Maryland are from a spawning process that results in all females. That section of big gunpowder is just about perfect when it comes to trout habitat. There is a wild brook trout population that dates to the last ice age, and a brown trout population that predates the 1980s minimum flow agreement.
Since the minimum flow agreement, there’s been occasional years when wild rainbows have appeared in that section of creek below prettyboy dam. In recent years I catch one or two a year, sometimes none. This year, my first trout was one of them.
But wait, there’s more:
This rainbow, another monster of about six inches, I caught about three years ago in late autumn on Morgan Run, a tributary to liberty reservoir, the second largest lake fully inside Maryland.
Strange thing about Morgan Run is that, over the past 30 or so years, there have been occasional years when stockers have spawned, resulting in a year or two of wild trout, usually browns, but every once in a blue moon, rainbows.
The stream has an acid problem at its headwaters, so unlike some other nearby streams, it doesn’t have a self sustaining wild trout population.
The issue at hand, back to the point, is the occasional appearance of a few wild rainbows.
I’m not married to the idea that either of these fish is stream spawned trout. Examine and let me know if you think either, or both, is hatched in a hatchery.
My subject of discussion is whether the occasional rainbow resulting from parthenogenesis turns up in the creeks where we fish.
Let’s chat.
