1/2 acre pond, 2 years old. Western N.Y.

Stocked the pond with 3” brookies last spring. They did very well , even with the extremely dry summer we had. They even tried to spawn last fall, gathering around the inlet and outlet of the pond, though the inlet is too steep and rocky for them to ascend.

The last few days they’ve been acting like they did last fall, hanging out around the outlet and inlet and also swimming around the pond in a group. I haven’t caught any yet but many appear to be around 14-15” and a few even larger.

I thought brookies were fall spawners but they sure act like they did last fall. Any ideas?

Tyler D,

Sorry that I cannot answer your question, but it is good to see a fellow trout guy from Western N.Y. I have an approx. one acre pond near Little Valley that I have stocked with Rainbows.

Hi Ken

I’m over in Randolph if you want to stop in some time. 12129 Fox Road.

Thanks Tyler,

I usually make it to camp about once per week so maybe later this summer when the workload levels off we can get together.

Sounds good.

Pure speculation here, as I really don't have a clue. From looking things up, it seems Brookies' spawn revolves around water temperature, once you hit that in the fall it triggers their spawn. It seems plausible to me that since the pond conditions are most likely not favorable to have pulled off that spawn in the fall, once the water returned to that temperature in the spring it could have triggered spawn again if eggs were not dropped in the fall. I may be totally off base, but kind of made sense in my head. Good luck on the pond, I'd love to see some Nipigon caliber monster Brookies grown. I'd love to make it to Nipigon someday and get a 8+ pound colored up monster to make a replica out of!

Hi Drew

Interesting hypothesis.

They stopped after a week or so and now back to acting normal. At the rate they’re growing, I’m pretty sure I could get some of them close to the 5 lbs range. Taking a few out to eat, I think I may have too many in my pond.

Going to start another post with some feeding questions.