I am not on a first-name basis with all 70 species of fish found in these mountain streams. For as long as I can remember one family alone, trout, Salmonidae, has held my complete attention, haunted me and delighted me, been the stuff of nightmare and dream, even hauled me on occasion to the rim of the universe. Trout are moody, complex, irascible creatures, a large family of five groups spread over three subfamilies, none of which get along with or particularly like each other, except as a potential meal. Discussion of Salmonidae usually includes char, Atlantic and Pacific salmon, graylings, and whitefish.
This is a lot of fish and almost all of them get under my skin or leave it trembling, as though exposed to a sudden wash of icy water.
Rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri) have been in Southern Appalachian streams since at least the 1930s. Anglers began introducing them into Smoky Mountain creeks and streams in the 1920s, maybe even earlier. Rainbow trout are western trout—hearty, tenacious, elusive, and adaptable. Like most trout, they are vicious and unrelenting. Although they have been stocked in most of the world's prime trout waters, the rainbow's natural range runs roughly from the high country of northern Mexico northward through California's mountain country, and on into the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and into Russia, where it is known as the Kamchatka trout.
Rainbows are wary, suspicious, and dyspeptic, all common traits among trout. They range widely, refusing to give in to trend, fashion, or any form of piscatorial conformity. They eschew the predictable. If human they would be carnival hucksters, bootleggers, acrobats, and skilled flimflam artists.
Lake rainbow trout rarely sport the dramatic coloring or spotted decoration of stream rainbows. Indeed, lake rainbows often flash dark greens and blues and highly polished silvers. In fast mountain water, rainbows take hold of an entirely different ensemble that features heavily spotted bodies. The spots are actually random, irregular dark blotches, moldy-black. They are also found on the tail and fins. The rainbow trout takes its name from its colorful lateral bands that can be anything from bruised salmon red to cinnabar, strawberry, rubiate, or shiny chrome red. These neon swaths of red are flashed only by mature rainbows. Unlike its cousin, the cutthroat trout, another rowdy western member of the Salmo clan, the rainbow has no hyroid teeth (teeth found at the back of the tongue). If time permits and if there is interest enough and you're in a counting mood, there are 12 rays on a rainbow's anal fin. If you come up with 13 or more you are in possession of a Pacific salmon.
Large or small, rainbow trout are aggressive and rapacious. I have heard of rainbow trout taken out of pristine lakes in Canada's British Columbia that weigh 50 pounds. Some fish. The rainbows in the trout streams I fish are minnows compared to this, averaging only a pound or two. In the Smokies a five- or six-pound rainbow is a fish of legend, an angler's totem, his haunting Moby Dick, a great and noble fish, equal in character at least to its Canadian relations. Like all trout, rainbows do best in cool, clean water that ranges in temperature from freezing to perhaps 75 degrees, with the most agreeable temperatures being between the mid-50s and perhaps 65 degrees. Rainbows are, for fish, rather long-lived, a trait trout anglers ascribe to their completely disagreeable temperament. Indeed, rainbows have been known to outlive the anglers who pursue them. This is because stress and self-esteem and image and things like that mean absolutely nothing to a trout.
© Article copyright Pruett Publishing.
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