First of all brown trout are a very wary species and notorious for not cooperating for anglers. Second of all if you have caught any of these fish and released them your odds of catching them again are even lower yet.
For those of us that have fly fished for them they can be maddeningly picky if the fly does not match the hatch. With my experience with them in a small pond when it became harvest time, I got a few of of the dumber ones with artificial lures, or only if I pissed the off by running a spoon past them over and over again. After that it was match the hatch (pellets only) or you could forget about even getting a bite. I had a couple of friends throw in crawlers and minnows without so much as a bite. One day I had Mr. & Mrs. Orvis flyfisher people over who refused to use anything other than flies. I told them the brown trout wouldn't be interested but they ignored me. After two hours of flailing the water with every fly in the box they drove away in a huff without so much as a strike. Two friends showed up that evening (another thing is your luck improves for browns under low light conditions), and landed about a dozen up to 9 pounds using the infamous pantyhose pellet. As the light dimmed a real plus was a small icefishing float as a strike indicator.
