Why are brook trout famous for eating anything?
Because their home waters make specialists starve. Brook trout dominate infertile, acidic headwaters and beaver ponds — cold, gorgeous, and poor, with a fraction of the insect biomass of a rich valley river — so natural selection built a take-everything opportunist: aquatic insects, terrestrials, minnows, leeches, salamanders, and each other, all in one stomach. The short growing season at brook trout latitudes (often 45–55°N) sharpens the urgency — a fish with four ice-free months cannot afford to inspect and refuse. For anglers this is the great brook trout charm: they hit flies, spinners, spoons, and worms with equal enthusiasm, and a poor cast that would empty a rainbow pool often still catches the brookie. The catch: that same eagerness makes populations easy to overharvest.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Diet
Same topic, other species
- Do crappie really eat their own young? — Crappie
- Do largemouth really eat frogs, mice, and even birds? — Largemouth Bass
- Do muskie eat bass — and do they ruin bass fisheries? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Why do tiny baits out-fish big ones so consistently? — Yellow Perch
- Do pike really eat ducklings and muskrats? — Northern Pike
- Do smallmouth feed on the surface? — Smallmouth Bass
- Why does the fishing die during the mayfly hatch? — Walleye