Trout in Pennsylvania

     One winter day when I was much younger, I was walking in a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania woodland and came upon a tumbling mountain brook.  I laid on the snow to peer into the cold, clear water to the bottom of that little waterway.  I vividly saw stones of various shapes and sizes through the crystalline, running water, and a six-inch brook trout staring back at me from just inches away!
     During another walk in a different woodland in October, I saw a few small trout darting for safety under stream banks.  Sitting on a log, I watched those banks with binoculars in hand.  Eventually a couple of small brook trout in breeding colors emerged from those streamsides.  They were strikingly beautiful!  And trout are not only lovely in themselves, but also in the waterways they inhabit in shaded, cool woods.
     Since spring is here and trout season is quickly approaching, I am thinking of trout in this state, although I am not a fisherman.  All trout species are well developed for life in running streams.  They are slender, and powerful to cope with the current in cold, clear, fast-running waterways, generally in beautiful, woodland habitats.  They feed on mayfly and stonefly larvae, smaller crayfish, minnows and other small creatures in sparkling brooks and streams.
     Three kinds of beautiful trout, brook, brown and rainbow, live in Pennsylvania's cold, crystalline streams.  Brook trout are native to the northeastern United States, including Pennsylvania.  Adult brook trout are brownish-green on top and along their flanks, with many red dots, each one surrounded by blue.  Their bellies are yellow-orange and their lower fins are orange, with a white leading edge on each one.  Adults vary in size from five to 18 inches long, depending on the size of the waterway they live in.
     Brown trout are native to Eurasia, and were introduced to North America several years ago, often to replace brook trout that could not tolerate slightly polluted waters.  Adult browns are brown on their backs and sides, with dark spots and smaller red and yellow dots.  And, although they are aliens to North America, brown trout spawn in many of the streams they were introduced to, perhaps competing with brook trout for spawning space in streams and brooks. 
     Rainbow trout are from the American west coast.  They, too, were stocked in Pennsylvania, as other places on Earth, to offer a variety of fishing species, particularly where native brook trout died out.  Rainbows are gray-green on their backs and flanks.  And they have a pink or light-red stripe along each side from gill to tail.
     All these trout species are predators and have predators.  Some adults are caught by bald eagles, ospreys, mink and river otters.  Eggs and small fry are consumed by crayfish, small fish and certain insect larvae, including stoneflies.
     These trout species spawn on the gravelly bottoms of the running waterways they live in.  Females of each species prepare nests for their many eggs by rolling on their sides and pushing against the bottom gravel with their bodies, fins and tails.  Brook and brown trout spawn in autumn, but rainbows do so in spring.
     Trout are beautiful, streamlined fish that live in cold, running waterways, often in forests, in the northern hemisphere.  They are well worth experiencing anytime of the year, anywhere.