Brown trout on the Metolious

Just got back from the Metolious, fun and interesting camping trip. Arrived early Friday, just as this latest winter storm was passing, and it was *cold*, 13 degrees was the high temp and it was still snowing a bit. I saw one angler pick up a couple whitefish while euro-nymphing but that’s about it.

After a bitterly cold night (sub-zero temps) today was moderate and sunny, highs in the 40’s. PMD’s and mahogany’s were sporadically hatching, but the fish weren’t really keying into them. Again, I saw some euro-nymphers pick up whitefish.

…that is, until about 3pm when I landed my first Brown Trout on the Met! This beautiful 18” fish was holding deep and under some overhanging brush, and fought well.

Caught on a perdigon hung 10 feet below a NZ strike indicator.
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(bonus photo- my dog hanging by the fire)
 
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Might just be me, but I always felt that the browns in the Met were out of place. Beautiful river, with awesome native red bands, bulls and whitefish. I was never really happy to catch an invasive species.
 
I think I heard something like they make up 3% of the population? Don’t know how much truth there is to that. But I’ve seen them up as high as Tract C bridge in the undercuts. Which is almost as high as you can go.
 
Chucker said:
Might just be me, but I always felt that the browns in the Met were out of place. Beautiful river, with awesome native red bands, bulls and whitefish. I was never really happy to catch an invasive species.
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Same. Honestly I didn’t know they existed there and was surprised to reel it in. Doing some quick searches it seems they “were introduced in the early 1900’s” but I can’t find anything else about it.

Still, I enjoyed the catch… I generally prefer to target native fish so this is one of the few browns I’ve ever caught.
 
mcswny said:
I think I heard something like they make up 3% of the population? Don’t know how much truth there is to that. But I’ve seen them up as high as Tract C bridge in the undercuts. Which is almost as high as you can go.
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Interesting that they seem to be outcompeted by the native red bands and bulls… I thought in cold waters they were detrimental to native fish.
 
You are a brave soul sir...well done. Thanks for the pictures.

Years back I caught my only Met Brown on a chubby. They are in Billy Chinook and there's no catch limit on them. They will always have access up in the river too. Surprised more aren't taken on streamers in the Lady M.
 
Blue Lines said:
Same. Honestly I didn’t know they existed there and was surprised to reel it in. Doing some quick searches it seems they “were introduced in the early 1900’s” but I can’t find anything else about it.

Still, I enjoyed the catch… I generally prefer to target native fish so this is one of the few browns I’ve ever caught.
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I honestly don’t know to much about them. I’ve fished the Met a lot and never personally caught one. But the ones that I’ve seen tend to be on the bigger side. They’re a plenty of them in the middle deschutes and LBC gives them perfect access.
 
mcswny said:
I honestly don’t know to much about them. I’ve fished the Met a lot and never personally caught one. But the ones that I’ve seen tend to be on the bigger side. They’re a plenty of them in the middle deschutes and LBC gives them perfect access.
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Forgive my ignorance, what does “LBC” stand for?
 
Cool fish. Not an "unicorn" on the Met - but very small population in that River, a once in a few years event.

My understanding is that they work there way up from Lake Billy Chinook - like the Bulls but obviously not as abundant as the Bulls.
Lot more Browns in the lake from what I heard, guess they don't migrate up the river as much, which surprises me as I would think the Met would be good spawning grounds for Browns as well.

Anyway, good catch. The pics of the very few Browns I have seen caught on the Met were not as large as your fish.

Peach
 
nice catch! I've never caught one near the size of yours. My understanding is that they come down from Suttle since there's a pretty decent population of them there....can't remember where I heard that though.
 
clarkman said:
nice catch! I've never caught one near the size of yours. My understanding is that they come down from Suttle since there's a pretty decent population of them there....can't remember where I heard that.
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makes sense with lake creek right there. And a lot of the ones ive heard and seen caught are higher in the system, near where lake creek dumps in.
 
mcswny said:
makes sense with lake creek right there. And a lot of the ones ive heard and seen caught are higher in the system, near where lake creek dumps in.
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Interesting... I fished Lake Creek in a few spots last summer and thought I had a brookie on a dry, but maybe it was a small brown. I thought I read all the fish passage barriers had been removed on the main stem, so hopefully there isn't more downstream migration, if that is the case.
 
mattsavage said:
Interesting... I fished Lake Creek in a few spots last summer and thought I had a brookie on a dry, but maybe it was a small brown. I thought I read all the fish passage barriers had been removed on the main stem, so hopefully there isn't more downstream migration, if that is the case.
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I hope it wasnt a brookie!
 
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