Interesting

[Zach Bearden]

First off.... Brian, how would you like to adopt me and let me fish all the time over there? lol jk

Anyways, all your fish eat over there is Stoneflies! haha

We fished right beneath Patrick Bridge on 5/28 and like I say all I could catch fish on is rubber legged stoneflies. The water was high and way off color. I really couldn't see more than a foot and a half deep. I think my end total was 7 fish for the day but I only fished maybe 4 hours in the same hole pretty much. It was my first time over so it was really cool to get to check out a new river. We are definately going to go over there again some time. Hopefully we won't get flooded like this one.

And FYI, MDWC stocked 4200 trout below Patrick. There were some massive browns in those tubes! It was pretty cool!

Sorry for the random post lol

[Brian Wise]

Who would have thought that one of those crazy pop-up storms would hit our watershed like that?

So you saw them stocking Zach? Seems they are changing their stocking habits....

Brian

[laker67]

And FYI, MDWC stocked 4200 trout below Patrick. There were some massive browns in those tubes! It was pretty cool!

Seems I recall from early posts that nfwr was a wild trout stream. So much for that now, huh?

[ozark trout fisher]

Seems I recall from early posts that nfwr was a wild trout stream. So much for that now, huh?

NFOW is a wild trout stream in every since of the word, and still is. Those were brown trout being stocked, not rainbows.

Rainbows are all wild in the North Fork (no stocking) , but the browns are stocked, as they cannot spawn successfully.

Most of the wild rainbows occur upstream of Patrick Bridge, and stocked brown trout and smallmouth bass take over below.

At least thats how I understand it.

[laker67]

NFOW is a wild trout stream in every since of the word, and still is. Those were brown trout being stocked, not rainbows.

Rainbows are all wild in the North Fork (no stocking) , but the browns are stocked, as they cannot spawn successfully.

Most of the wild rainbows occur upstream of Patrick Bridge, and stocked brown trout and smallmouth bass take over below.

At least thats how I understand it.

Last saturday, I was walking around and looking at the fish in the raceways at bennett. I witnessed a smaller trout jump over the concrete divider into a raceway with larger fish. The raceways are divided to hold different age groups. Looking around, I saw a few fish of different sizes mixed in with a certain age group. So it must be pretty common for fish to jump from one raceway to another. I even saw a few small browns in with some rainbows. So here is a "what if" question for you. What if a few rainbows ended up in the raceway for browns, and those browns along with the few rainbows were scooped up and stocked into the NFOW? Come spawn time, you have hatchery fish mingling with the wild.

[dgames]

NFOW is a wild trout stream in every since of the word, and still is. Those were brown trout being stocked, not rainbows.

Rainbows are all wild in the North Fork (no stocking) , but the browns are stocked, as they cannot spawn successfully.

Most of the wild rainbows occur upstream of Patrick Bridge, and stocked brown trout and smallmouth bass take over below.

At least thats how I understand it.

It has been a couple of years since I fished the river, but I have always caught rainbows predominantly all the way down to the last riffle above dawt.

[ozark trout fisher]

It has been a couple of years since I fished the river, but I have always caught rainbows predominantly all the way down to the last riffle above dawt.

It is more than possible that a few rainbows slip in each year, maybe as many as 100 or so a year, to make a wild guess.

But considering there is about 1000 wild rainbow trout per mile in the most productive sections on the NFOW,, and about 15 miles of productive trout water, that spreads those stocked trout genes out pretty thin. . Also, stocked rainbows generally don't spawn very well in the wild until they become better adapted, so I would say we have little to worry about.

Thats my .02

[Brian Wise]

Ozark Trout Fisher is right on. The NFOW hasn't been stocked with rainbows since the 60's. MDC does stock brown trout every year to the tune of around 6000 last year.

About the rainbows getting in with the browns during the stocking.....I guess anything is possible but I really even doubt it would be in the hundreds---and they would show up in the trout surveys the MDC runs every year so I guess if you wanted to you could find out around how many there would be.

Either way, the NFOW has the largest population of wild rainbow trout in Missouri, and quite possibly in the mid-west. Add browns up to 15lbs plus and that equals complete sweetness!

Brian

[2sheds]

Re: Wild Rainbows

In areas where wild (re-producing) trout co-exist with hatchery stockers, its easy to tell the difference. Stockers have worn pectroral fins (from contact with side walls of rearing pens) and will often have a fin clipped by the hatchery for identification purposes (Class of 2009). Recent stockers are pale in coloring, and only pick up the bright colorations as their diet matures on live prey (as opposed to trout chow).

In areas where rainbow trout are stocked adjacent to natives, the wild trout will generally run the rookies out of camp. Therefore, the upstream portions of NorthFork (Rainbow Springs to Blair Bridge) are destined to exclude any stockers that might try to migrate up from the furthest upstream stocking point (Patrick Bridge) where the browns (99+%) are put into the river.

So escaped hatchery rainbow could constitute only a very tiny portion of the population at most. But I guess its not impossible.

Being one who tends to recognize the difference, I have never caught a stocked rainbow on the NorthFork.

Question for the hometeam: In the last 10 years, has anyone caught a hatchery-raised rainbow trout in the NorthFork ? If so, where ?

[Gavin]

I dont think that I've ever caught a stocked rainbow on the NFoW and I've fished a couple days a year for almost 20 years. There are rainbows througout the river. I've caught them occasionally while smallmouth fishing way up above the start of the blue ribbon area, and all the way down to Dawt. I dont catch that many brown trout above the falls but they seem to be pretty common from the falls on down. Cheers.