When I was a kid people wrote about bull trout like it was some kind of salmon-eating scrap fish that was bad eating, poor fighting, an ugly fish that wasn't worth fishing for or even having in the river to begin with. Like a lot of kids I believed what I read and heard from older sportsmen. Also like a lot of kids I loved fishing but was intimidated by big fast rivers like the Sauk or the Green. So I was pretty much a creek fishermen which brought me in close contact with lots of different native fish.

The summer of 1982 brought me and a friend to the upper Greenwater river. We had talked his older sister’s boyfriend into taking us up there and then picking us up in two days. It was the picking up part that turned out to be the problem, but some things are better off forgotten. Anyway the weather was great and we started catching a good number of small rainbow and cutthroat in the 5 to 10 inch range. In those days the logging wasn’t as bad as it is now but right off we noticed that where they had logged down to the water there were practically no fish. But where the big trees shaded the creek we found lots of small trout. Also we found that in the bigger sections of virgin timber there was a lot less silt and gravel. These sections of big timber provided deeper holes and bigger fish. It was in one of these virgin timber sections that I caught my first bull trout. I remember it like it was yesterday. The weather was very hot and sunny probably in the high eighties, but in the big trees it got downright cool. I was about 20 yards ahead of my friend when I came to the deep pool. It was crystal-clear and probably 15-feet-deep which was very deep for this stream in the summer.

I had been using a small spinner, but decided to put on a large red and white spoon. I cast up stream and reeled back. I was just thinking that I should change lures as the spoon was at this point almost back to me when my rod was almost pulled out of my hand!!!!! Just in front of me was the biggest brook trout I had ever seen. The great fish shook and rolled his head and headed back up the pool, the brilliant colors still etched in my mind. My little glass pole bent pole bent almost in two. There was no time to loosen the drag, I opened the bail and feathered the line with my hand. I had no net and yelled for my friend who always carried one to get up here quick! I had a big one on! He came splashing up the stream; what is it a rainbow? It’s a world record brook trout I yelled.

The big trout went up and refused to come out of the deep water of the pool. I bet you got a salmon my friend said, can’t be they can’t get around the dam I yelled. As the trout would not budge, legs shaking I started wading in after him up the pool. When I was about waist deep I suddenly slipped on a rock and went under. In the shock of the whole thing I managed to bang my arm up pretty bad but held on to the pole. All this thrashing around the fish decided to go back down the pool and head for the ocean, but this was his mistake because once he got into the shallow water I got good pressure on him and my friend finally got his net around its head and we both pounced on him. Holy shit, it’s huge was all my friend could say. I was completely soaked and bleeding and shaking as my friend got out his rusted tape measure and measured him to just shy of 27 inches. After we had snapped a picture of a couple pan-sized trout and the bull trout, I said to my friend, it’s a Dolly Varden. Wow what a dream fish, he kept saying.

We went back to camp after that and cooked the fish up that night the bull trout was great just like salmon steak my friend said. The next day we found more bull trout in the deep clear pools, none as big and many we could not catch, But we were sure hooked on them. These great fish were amazing because they were so much bigger and fatter then the other trout we found. And the brilliant colors were hard to believe, blues reds oranges and yellow. I learned two things on that trip. One is that bull trout are a great fish, and that virgin timber is a must for good trout fishing on streams. We swore ourselves to never tell anyone about where these magical trout were. Unfortunately just three years later the area was clear-cut, the big pools filled with gravel and the clear water changed to a rusty color and the big bull trout are no longer there. It is very sad to say that this was public land and National Forest. f just two hundred yards would have been left uncut on both sides I feel the bull trout would still be there. You think these Yale educated foresters could have figured that out.

I think this story illustrates that bull trout have the potential to get big. After 1982 I had a special place in my heart for bull trout. I have waded up or crawled up just about any stream that I thought might hold these fish. I also tried raising these fish in my father’s ponds and found their growth rates amazing. Also they seem to have a good temperament for small waters.

I found it just a little funny when in the nineties the bull trout became the fish version of the spotted owl with fishermen seeming to be the chief problem followed by the stocking of trout, when everything I’ve seen points to logging. When I came along bull trout were already pushed up into headwater areas where most fish are native and few people fished because of the difficulties of getting into these places. I think current regs closing lower sections of rivers and keeping head water areas open makes the problem worse for native fish which will be impacted by guys that are forced to leave the areas along the road where they always fished for stocked fish and have them head up into the head waters going after native fish.

I think now though may be the time for bull trout in the high lakes, for now they are not considered the scrap fish they once were, and on the other hand if they should get out of the lake god forbid and into the drainage they would be native and may replenish stock from over-fished river fish.

– Leif Nagle