The Extinct Monadnock Lake Trout

Reading, Watching & Wishing about Fishing

I’m not a great fisherman by any means, but I aspire to be. In Colorado, I did a lot of fishing (and not a lot of catching). These cold winter days, this hobby mostly involves reading and watching videos about fly fishing.

Searching for the Extinct Silver Trout

Imagine my shock when this Youtube documentary about an extinct subspecies of trout happened to be centered on New Hampshire. Not only that, it talks about the now extinct Monadnock Lake Trout!

The Monadnock Lake Trout / Silver Trout / Salvelinus fontinalis agassizii

You should watch the video, but if you don’t have an hour, here’s a quick summary.

Right at the base of Mount Monadnock is Dublin Pond. There are accounts from the late 1800s and early 1900s of the pond teeming with a unique species of fish. They were so abundant that farmers caught them by the bucket and fed them to their pigs.

Due to overfishing, legal loopholes and other fish being stocked in the lakes, these fish are now presumed to be extinct. The last written account of someone catching one is in the 1930s.

This same species was found in another lake in Northern New Hampshire. That’s possible because of the glacial history of the Connecticut River, which was one large lake after the last ice age.

Eventually, the ice dam holding the lake back ruptured and the water dispersed. The fish that survived in newly formed ponds evolved into a specialized subspecies in at least two places. How cool is that?

A Glacial History of The Connecticut River

The most interesting part of the video mentioned a written reference to a warden getting permission to catch some Silver Trout to stock Stone Pond, which is where we swim all summer!

In the video, the creator only spends a few hours looking in Stone Pond. I’ll be fishing there this coming summer and will be keeping an eye out for this long lost species of fish.

Sex, Death and Fly Fishing by John Gierach

A friend lent me this book and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler: it’s almost entirely about fly fishing. Very little death. Even less sex.

Eye-catching title aside, the author writes matter-of-factly about his experience fishing in the western US. He shares knowledge about hatches, fly tying, and small town life. I remember some of the rivers that he writes about in Colorado. His voice is poetic and wise, without ever being sappy.

My favorite essay is about his mission to raise heirloom chickens to tie a specific fly with the feathers. He also hunts rabbits for their fur. Only those natural materials can be used to tie the right fly the right way, which mimics a certain bug at a certain stage of its life cycle at the right time of day. That’s what catches fish.

Gierach is not quite the earthy type you’d expect to raise chickens. He’s a healthy mix of curmudgeon, naturalist and craftsman. Highly recommend the book if you’re looking for a fishing fix.

Dick Surette’s Trout and Salmon Fly Index

Speaking of tying flies, I bought a copy of this fly index for $1 at a library book sale.

It’s an interesting read, not only for the 170+ patterns it describes. It also gives a brief history of each pattern, who developed it and what regions it is popular in. Each pattern calls for things like fox squirrel tail fur, pheasant feathers, peacock hurl and a bunch of other stuff I don’t yet fully understand. I’m learning though.

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As John Gierach extolls, there is no greater thrill than catching a fish on a fly you tied, with materials you gathered. Now imagine if it were a previously-thought-to-be-extinct species of trout to boot! A man can dream.

A very smol Colorado Brook Trout in the Fraser River

Considering this is the last fish I caught, I think the Silvers will remain a mystery in the depths of Stone Pond for another hundred years.