Joshua.....bull trout are one of those lesser known big charrs in the US. My parents live on the north end of Flathead Lake by Bigfork......I grew up from the mid 1960's fishing there.....we use to troll for kokanee all the time and pick the occasional bull trout. Once in a blue moon we'd catch a nice one up the Swan River but mostly eel like juveniles....darn things don't start filling out until they get about 18" long. In the early 80's we started visited my parents in early to mid August and discovered a new world with big bull trout spawning up the Swan River from Swan Lake. There were days I caught 30 of these guys.....they would average 3 to nearly 15 lbs.. Here are some pics of those early fish....
This one is my with my uncle who has always shared my obsession with fishing.....he's 93 now and can't get down to the river anymore....
This is my son who is now 25....I'm gettin old...
In August the spawning colors for these are green on the back to copper and red on the belly....wish we had more pics from that era....but it was a hike in there and the cameras weren't teeny....
This is the only high grade photo of a juvenile from a few years ago.....
Starting about 20 years ago the bull trout was declared threatened and you haven't even been able to target them fishing.....so we stopped going down into that area and travelling there in July when the big ones aren't up the river. This year I will be there in August and if I stumble across a nice spawner I will try to get some high def pictures. Unfortunately, the Flathead numbers of bulls has dropped precipitously due to the inadvertent (although really stupid) introduction of mysis shrimp into Flathead Lake 35 years ago causing the kokanee salmon to disappear....the bulls main food source. It's too bad cause the situation can't be reversed...Flathead Lake is overpopulated with lake trout.
Brian
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