The author releases a brown trout into the waters of the Redwood River in southwestern Minnesota. Simonson Photo.

By Nick Simonson

For those of us on the prairie, stocked trout provide perhaps the best introduction to fishing for the species.  Once my brother and I, along with a select number of friends, had learned of a population of the salmonids that had flown under the radar stocked in a lake near my hometown, I was hopelessly hooked on trout fishing.  It didn’t hurt either that many of them topped 20 inches after somehow sneaking by most anglers for the three years or so that they were stocked.  This was before internet publication of stocking and survey reports became mainstream, which had a lot to do with our amazing early runs on that small prairie lake.

From there, and a couple of moves around Minnesota, I settled in the southwest, where the Redwood River rolls through the drops and turns of Camden State Park, giving an almost North Shore feel to the fishing for the brown trout stocked in the small stream’s waters each spring.  It was a vernal ritual on the opening morning of the season to cast jigs on light tackle and woolly buggers on the fly rod to those stockers the weekend after they hit the flow, or to venture out with that season’s fly tying students from the class my Pheasants Forever chapter sponsored.  Everything I’ve learned about wild trout – from brookies in the small creeks of the Black Hills to the massive steelhead in the streams and rivers of Lake Superior’s north shore – has built upon the excitement and the knowledge gained in fishing for stocked trout in my younger years, and in those opportunities in the prairie reservoirs around me now.

While it may have meant leveling up my cast, technique, and entomology studies, what I learned in my formative years of fishing for those transplanted trout has made the trip up the learning curve for those more technical ones born in the wild, a bit easier.  Plus, when things get tough for them or the opportunity simply isn’t close enough, stocked trout still remain a favorite draw when the seasons open up around the region or they come shooting out of the discharge tube on the tanker trucks that distribute them to area waters.  Whether via spoon, jig, nymph, streamer, and in the latter part of spring, those fun dry flies like skittering caddises that catch their attention up top, stocked trout are perhaps the most willing participants in the contest of fishing and open to all.

This season, if you haven’t given stocked trout a try, consider it a bucket list item. There’s likely an opportunity nearby that will come with the start of the season, or the first load from the stocking truck in just a few weeks.  There’s no telling how far that first outing will take you and the other fish the opportunity will prepare you for.  Whether it’s a trip to the driftless area along the Minnesota-Iowa-Wisconsin border, or a venture up onto the shores the Great Lakes, the door opens wherever those eager and easier-to-catch stockers may end up.  Take a new angler along with you and share that excitement and the color that comes with a flashing rainbow trout at the end of the line or the relentless twists and turns of a feisty brown coming to hand.  Odds are, you’ll be hooked on the experience that stocked trout give, and the lessons they provide…in our outdoors.