Big Hunting creek 12/20

[spoonerlab]

On Saturday I went up to Big Hunting creek. The water was running high and pretty dirty but it was pretty nice, I only saw one other person who was just starting and gave me alot of advice. I caught 3 brookies in a big deep pool on a streamer. they were the ugliest brook trout i have ever caught but were fish nontheless.
Joe

[Salmo trutta]

It's not that ugly. Nice size stocked brookie. You never know when you might hook into that monster stocked rainbow or natural brown. I've seen rainbows in there close to 20 inches and some even bigger. The biggest brown I've seen was around 14 inches but beautiful as can be. This is a great time of year to fish that stream IMO.

[Art77]

You know that first liar never has a chance.
I caught a 17" wild brown there two years back. In truth, most of the stream breed browns have been less than 10", but they are always there and generally are on the feed. Have not seen the stocked rainbows in a couple of years, but they were nice size then.
Now that I have told the second story......

[uncle phill]

Looks like a nice brookie to me, even if he is stocked. Wow, I used to spend alot of time on BHC back in the early to late 80s. Brookies (wild or stocked, if they were even stocked back then) were few and far between for me.

Seems there has always been some big browns in there though. My biggest there came from the bridge pool on a tan leach (unwetted) to look like a piece of bread. One of the old timers from MFA shared that tip with me.

[spoonerlab]

I didnt mean to say that they were that ugly but most of the brook trout are wild or native fish so compared to them they are kinda ugly. I also heard that the west branch above the lake they have wild and native rainbows, can anyone confirm this or did i hear wrong?

[jamie coats]

I believe the reason he is lacking some color is because it is post spawn. Nice Fish.

Jamie Coats

[Art77]

I've only fished above the lake a couple of times as the section below seems to fish so much better. In those few times, I did not see rainbows. The gradient is steep, particularly at the falls;but maybe some fish stocked in the lake can run up a ways.

[buggerfly]

I have never seen any rainbows above the dam. It might be possible to find some wild ones, but you will not find any native ones as they are an introduced species.

[Salmo trutta]

Some of the stocked fish in the lake will run up the creeks but I've never heard of natural rainbows there.

[spoonerlab]

o ok some guy told me that they had wild fish up there