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Brook trout were the first salmonid species in Colorado
The brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis, is an engaging fish. Nearly every trout fisher that I know, young and old alike, has fond memories concerning the beautiful little trout that inhabit most of Colorado's mountain streams. Many anglers remember a brook trout as being first at something or other; their first trout caught from a stream, first trout on a fly rod, first trout on a spinning rod, first trout on something other than a worm, first trout cooked over a campfire beside a moonlit mountain lake, first trout (fill in the blank).
Eastern brook trout are good at being first. Pioneers of a sort, they were the first salmonid species introduced into Colorado, beating the California rainbows by ten years. In late 1872, Denver Alderman, James M. Broadwell, obtained 10,000 fertile brook trout eggs from a fish culturist in Boscobel, Wisconsin and hatched them at his facility located on the South Platte River ten miles north of Denver.
My other life - Robert Croft
I'm basically a boy from the country, from Hendy in West Wales. It's something I started doing in those long school holidays in the summer. My grandfather fished, my father fished and it just gets handed down like playing rugby in Wales is handed down from generation to generation. What was your first fish?
Like a cricketer I started with a net. My parents took me down to the local river and I caught a trout. I didn't know at the time that they had taken out it of the freezer earlier. But I didn't care I was, er, hooked after that. What sort of fishing do you specialise in?
Although I do some sea fishing I mainly fly fish. A friend of mine owns a stretch on the River Tawe and that's where you will see me going after salmon and sea trout. What has been your biggest catch?
My biggest fish to date was a beautiful 15lb salmon I landed last September at a stretch of river in Capel Dewi in Carmarthen - one of the most prolific sea trout rivers in the UK.
river people at heart
But, while owning a fly-fishing shop helps pays the bills, Mann and Williamson are river people at heart. They study rivers, fish them and praise them. "The Flambeau is as good as rivers get,'' Mann said last week, while he operated the oars on a drift boat on the Flambeau River. "It has smallmouth bass, muskie, catfish. The Flambeau ranges from lots of fish to big fish. It's loaded." We had met at the Flambeau with two drift boats, lots of fly rods and plenty of bottled water to endure one of hottest summer days in years. Williamson piloted one boat with Dave Carlson, a television outdoors reporter from Eau Claire, Wis. Mann operated the other boat, where I would fish with wildlife artist Bob White from Marine on St. Croix. A bounty of rainfall in northern Wisconsin has pushed the Flambeau River to normal levels, a stark contrast to conditions earlier this summer.
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