Do other fish eat trout eggs — and is fishing the "egg bite" ethical?

Egg predation is enormous and completely natural: suckers, sculpins, perch, whitefish — and other trout — line up below spawning gravel, and drifting eggs that escaped burial are among the richest food packets in the river. This drives the famous egg bites: during fall brook and lake trout spawns, and during spring rainbow runs, egg imitations fished downstream of spawning areas out-produce everything. The ethical line most anglers draw is positional: fishing egg patterns to feeding fish holding below the spawning zone is fair game — those eggs were lost anyway — while casting to paired fish working a redd, or wading through spawning gravel to reach the bite, crosses into doing damage. The eggs drifting to your fish are the surplus; the eggs under your boots are the future.

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