Wolfe County, Kentucky
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On The Fly Freshwater
December 2024
Article and Photos by Jimmy Jacobs
Wild brook trout are not often associated with the Bluegrass State. That’s understandable. Despite these fish, which are actually in the char family, being the only native trout species found east of the Mississippi River, their original range did not include Kentucky. According to Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture research, brookies were never naturally present in the state.
Brook trout have been around in the South at least since the last Ice Age receded about 25,000 years ago. The ideal conditions for brookies to thrive is being in areas that have an air temperature of no more than 69.8 degrees in July and ground water at 59 degrees. The fish can survive at higher levels of both of those, but they don’t thrive. In most of the South, those conditions are likely found at elevations of 2,500 to 3,000 feet above sea level.
A wild Kentucky brookie from the Dog Fork.
There are a few waters within Kentucky that come close to meeting such criteria as needed to support brook trout. But rather, the Bluegrass State has waters where wild populations of brook trout can survive, rather than finding those ideal conditions. Today reproducing populations of brookies are located in some streams on the western slope of the Cumberland Mountains along the Virginia border, as well as a pocket of fish in the Red River Gorge of the Daniel Boone National Forest to the east of Lexington.
So how did brook trout show up in the state? Over the years there was a persistent rumor that an unidentified “bucket biologist” had imported some of these fish from Michigan and released them in the mountain streams. However, that view is only partially correct.
The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources agrees that the stockings were done, and their department did not have a hand in it. Back in the 1950s a gentleman named Bill Holmes had moved to Louisville from his native Pennsylvania. He was an “amateur” fisheries biologist, did research on a number of Kentucky streams and transplanted brookies from Pennsylvania into those waters at his own expense. Those efforts did produce some positive effects, along with some other mixed ones. Although his work was beneficial at the time, it would be highly illegal now.
Today the Bluegrass State has a total of 90.6 miles of brook trout water. Within that, there are 14.1 miles that support reproducing populations of fish. However, 10 of those miles are in areas where no fishing is allowed. The closed streams are Bad Branch, as well as the portions of Martins Fork and Shillalah Creek in the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. The remaining open water is composed of roughly a mile each on Martins Fork and Shillalah Creek, along with a mile each on the Dog Fork and Parched Corn Creek. Those two latter streams are in Wolfe County in the federally protected Red River Gorge.
In the case of Parched Corn Creek, it was a beneficiary of Bill Holmes’ earlier efforts, but also resulted in a mixed result. They did reproduce, but by 2013, due to ice storms and other weather problems, the brookies had virtually disappeared from the stream. During that year the KDFWR began a 5-year program to restock the creek with 300, 5-inch fish annually. Volunteers using backpacks transported the brook trout down the half-mile trail to reach the stream. A couple of years into that effort, some 2-inch young-of-the-year brookies were turning up in surveys. Still, recent reports from anglers have noted that fish are hard to find and catch on the stream. The fishable length of Parched Corn is 1.1 miles of water.
Parched Corn is one of the creeks that harbor wild brook trout.
My personal introduction to Kentucky’s wild brook trout took place a couple of decades back. On that venture I had driven into the Red River Gorge to try to catch one of those fish from the Dog Fork. That stream is a quite small and overgrown flow that rises in the Gorge area, just northeast of the village of Pine Ridge. It then flows northeast to empty into Swift Camp Creek.
Swift Camp has quite a history of its own. Named for Jonathan Swift, the man and his lost silver mine are stuff of legend in the Southern Appalachians. Supposedly, Mr. Swift was hunting in Kentucky in 1760, when he wounded a bear. He tracked it to a cave in which he found a vein of silver. He never revealed the location of his mine, but one version of the story placed it near present day Swift Camp Creek. As noted, this is one version of the tale. Others place the Swift Mine in Virginia or Tennessee.
Be that as it may, this day I hiked a mile and a half down to Swift Camp and turned upstream, not in search of silver, but rather a wild brook trout – the “Jewel of the Southern Appalachians.” Once on that flow, it was another mile and half to reach the mouth of the Dog Fork. It took some bushwacking and dapping with the fly rod stuck through the vegetation, but eventually I did prove that wild brookies are in Kentucky. The fish I caught was just 5 inches long, but it felt like a trophy.
For the full story of Southern Appalachian brook trout, you will find Jimmy Jacobs’ book
Brook Trout in Dixie
in the On The Fly South bookstore.
