Natural Born Trout

[Tom C]

My son caught this baby trout just below Fall Creek on Sunday; pretty cool!  I wonder how common this is on Taneycomo.  Hopefully he won't be Brown Trout food and grow to be an adult.

Tom Ciolino

 

[Ik314]

That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing 

[Phil Lilley]

There's quite a few in the lake.  MDC has acknowledged that there is natural reproduction happening here.  One contributing factor is the pondweed growth - where young trout can hide from predators.

And yes- they are prime trout bait - both browns and rainbow eat them.

[tjm]

That is interesting Phil, where do they find suitable spawning areas?

I had thought that they required stable flows in <4' of water? or are they using a feeder stream?

[trythisonemv]

10 hours ago, tjm said:

That is interesting Phil, where do they find suitable spawning areas?

I had thought that they required stable flows in <4' of water? or are they using a feeder stream?

They breed in feeder creeks for sure. As a kid I saw them spawning in local creeks even up turkey Roark and others. They spawn well in Missouri where as the brownies from what research I've done can't handle the mineral make up of our  water any where except the current river I believe. 

[tjm]

In the feeder streams does not surprise me so much, I've caught parr in a few of the stocked creeks and we know that rainbow are naturalized in some other creeks. But the pond weed in the lake wouldn't be very important to fry up in a creek.

Now I will be  wondering what in our water the browns can't adapt to. They seem to adapt to most other places.

[Ik314]

4 hours ago, trythisonemv said:

They breed in feeder creeks for sure. As a kid I saw them spawning in local creeks even up turkey Roark and others. They spawn well in Missouri where as the brownies from what research I've done can't handle the mineral make up of our  water any where except the current river I believe. 

They don’t succeed in reproducing in the current unfortunately. I don’t know if anyone knows why. I’ve heard the water chemistry theory and I’ve also heard since they spawn much earlier than rainbows do here, the water is warmer than needed at the time that they’re fired up 

[trythisonemv]

1 hour ago, Ik314 said:

They don’t succeed in reproducing in the current unfortunately. I don’t know if anyone knows why. I’ve heard the water chemistry theory and I’ve also heard since they spawn much earlier than rainbows do here, the water is warmer than needed at the time that they’re fired up 

I've heard from several folk that they do spawn in current... I read a report that also said they spawn in Taney too. . . So who th heck knows.  Wish they did spawn. Think it's weird the spawn in ark and Georgia and Virginia and several other states that aren't any cooler than Missouri but thy won't spawn here. 

[Ryan Miloshewski]

When I was younger and starting out, I talked to Spence Turner about this. His consensus after 50 years was it is just too warm for browns to spawn successfully. Average water temp in Oct/Nov is 58 degrees in Missouri and they need it to be under 53 degrees. He said the embryos die around two weeks after being fertilized. If Taneycomo had a minimum flow requirement, I would bet they'd successfully spawn. 

Of course there are the statistical outliers and some likely spawn successfully, but not enough to sustain. 

[tjm]

So we're saying that Mo. waters are warmer than Ar, Va, etc.?