Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — Diet

Walleye: a minnow profile sized to the season. Trout: match the species first, then the hatch.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — What this means for fishing

Walleye is a light problem and trout a temperature problem — solve that first, then pick the lure.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — Growth table

Northern giants are old — walleye past 20 years, lakers 30–40: keep the mid-size fish, release the big ones.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — Movement & range

Walleye: follow conditions along the contour. Lakers: follow the cold band up and down. Stream trout: fish the lie.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — seasonal

Walleye: fish dusk in every season. Trout: fish the cold ends of the year — in summer go deep or stop.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — senses

Trout: daylight, stealth, clean hands. Walleye: low light, a bait that moves water, real meat on the hook.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — Spawning

Know your closure dates: spring protects the walleye run and rainbow redds; fall protects brook and lake trout shoals.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — How it strikes

Walleye: lift and feel before setting. Trout: keep it moving, and change speed when a follower hesitates.

Walleye vs Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — Territory & aggression

Walleye: find one, then pick the school apart. Stream trout: make the first drift through the best seam count.

FAQ

How does a trout's diet change as it grows?

It climbs a ladder, and each rung changes how you should fish. Fry eat zooplankton; juveniles and most adult stream trout eat aquatic insects — nymphs, larvae, emergers — which is why fly fishing is insect-obsessed; but somewhere around 30–40 cm (12–16 in), the energy math flips: a big trout burns more chasing tiny insects than they pay back, so large fish shift toward minnows, sculpins, crayfish, and even mice, taking fewer, bigger meals. This is the single best explanation for why trophy hunters throw streamers and big spoons while match-the-hatch anglers catch numbers. Lake trout ride the ladder to its top — adults in most lakes are almost purely fish-eaters — while brook trout, opportunists for life, never fully leave the insect rungs.

What does a stream rainbow actually eat day to day?

Mostly things you never see: roughly 80–90 percent of a drift-feeding rainbow's diet is taken underwater — mayfly and stonefly nymphs, caddis larvae and pupae, midge larvae, scuds — delivered by the current as "drift," which peaks at dawn and dusk when invertebrates lose their grip or migrate. The dramatic surface rise that defines trout fishing in the popular imagination is the visible 10–20 percent. Seasonal riders join the menu: terrestrials (ants, beetles, grasshoppers) in late summer when meadow banks feed the river, eggs behind fall spawners, and minnows year-round for larger fish. The practical rule follows directly: when nothing rises, nothing is wrong — fish subsurface, because that is where the eating almost always is.

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.

What do lake trout eat?

In a healthy big lake: coldwater baitfish, overwhelmingly. Adult lakers are built around pelagic prey — cisco (lake herring) and smelt where they occur, plus whitefish, sculpins, and burbot — and the cisco connection is the master key to laker location, because the trout simply live where those schools live, inside the cold band. This diet is also the growth engine behind 15–20 kg (33–44 lb) fish. The revealing exception: in lakes without pelagic baitfish, lake trout eat plankton and insects their whole lives and stay small and slim — two lakes a few kilometers (a couple of miles) apart can hold 20 kg (44 lb) fish and 1.5 kg (3 lb) fish of the same species and age. Before targeting trophies, ask one question: does this lake have cisco or smelt?

When is the egg bite, and why does it work so well?

Twice a year, keyed to whoever is spawning upstream. Fall (roughly October–November at mid-latitudes): brook trout, lake trout, and — on Great Lakes tributaries — salmon spawn, and rainbows in particular stack behind them to intercept drifting eggs. Spring (April–May): rainbows spawn, and everything else returns the favor. It works because a salmonid egg is an outrageous food deal — a dense ball of fat and protein, 5–8 mm (about a quarter inch), requiring zero chase, and the fish see thousands of the real thing, so an egg pattern matches the most abundant food item in the river at that moment. Fish it dead-drifted near bottom, downstream of spawning gravel — and stay off the redds themselves while you do.

How do I pick bait or lure size for trout?

Match the dominant prey, then adjust for temperature and ambition. Baseline: stream insects run tiny, so size 12–18 flies and 4–7 cm (1.5–3 in) spinners and spoons cover most rainbow and brook trout situations; lake trout eating 15–25 cm (6–10 in) cisco justify lures in that class. Cold water shrinks the target — a trout at 4 °C (39 °F) will not chase, so downsize and slow down; warm-but-legal water and fall urgency justify sizing up. The ambition adjustment is the big-fish rule from the diet ladder: a large offering filters out small fish and speaks directly to the minnow-eaters, at the price of fewer takes. If fish flash at your lure but refuse, drop one size before you change anything else — size is the variable trout care about most.

Do trout eat suckers, sunfish or dead fish?

Suckers and dead fish, in specific situations; sunfish, essentially never. Lake trout: in northern lakes short of ciscoes, young suckers are part of an almost purely fish diet, and lakers are willing scavengers — a dead cisco, smelt or piece of sucker resting on bottom is a classic set-line bait under the ice, where regulations allow it. Stream trout meet suckers differently: when suckers run up tributaries to spawn in spring, rainbows and brook trout line up below them for drifting eggs and later pick off the fry, a quieter cousin of the salmon egg bite. Stream trout seldom touch dead fish. Sunfish are warm, weedy-water animals, and trout are cold-water fish; the two rarely share water, so a bluegill is not a meaningful trout food.

What is the fall pattern for brook and lake trout?

Two overlapping programs: spawn and feast. As water falls through 10 °C (50 °F) — October at 45°N, September farther north — brook trout in full crimson-and-orange spawning color move to gravelly spring-fed shallows and tributary riffles, while lake trout gather over rocky shoals and reef tops in 2–10 m (6–33 ft) to broadcast eggs at night. Around the spawners, everything else is eating hard against winter: this is the season of aggressive takes on spoons and streamers in shallow water. Check regulations first — many jurisdictions close brook and lake trout waters in late September or October precisely to protect these concentrated, catchable spawners.

How should I fish the weeks when summer breaks into fall?

Follow the cooling water shallower, week by week. As stream temperatures drop back through 18 °C (64 °F) and lower — late August into September at mid-latitudes — rainbows and brook trout that spent summer pinned to cold refuges spread back through the whole system, and the morning-only ethic can relax into all-day fishing. On lakes, the thermocline is eroding from the top down, so lake trout begin appearing shallower than their midsummer 20–30 m (66–98 ft): intercept them at 12–20 m (40–66 ft) structure before turnover finishes the job. It is also the year's big-meal season — fish grow urgent about calories, and streamers and larger lures out-produce the tiny stuff of summer.

Spinners, spoons, or flies — when should I throw which?

Match the tool to visibility, water type, and species. Spinners excel where the lateral line does the finding: stained water, broken pocket water, brook trout streams, and freshly stocked fish — the blade's thump calls fish that cannot see far, and covers water fast. Spoons cast farther and run deeper, making them the shore tool for lakes: ice-out lake trout, cruising rainbows, and trolling. Flies win where trout are eating insects and inspecting closely — slow clear pools, hatches, pressured water — because nothing else imitates a size-16 mayfly. An honest simplification: fish spinners to find fish, spoons to reach fish, flies to fool fish; carrying two of the three covers almost every trout day.

Why do trout anglers insist on barbless hooks and wet hands?

Because trout are physically fragile in ways bass are not, and both practices attack real mortality sources. Trout skin has a thin, easily damaged mucus layer over small scales; dry hands, dry nets, and grass strip that barrier and open the fish to fungal infection that kills weeks later — so wet hands, rubber nets, and keeping fish in the water are not fussiness, they are wound care. Barbless hooks cut handling time dramatically (often to zero, unhooked in the net) and turn deep-hook events from surgery into a flick. Both matter most exactly when trout are already stressed: warm water, long fights, air exposure. The compounding rule: barbless + wet + fast + in-water release stacks the survival odds; each shortcut you skip subtracts from them.

Why do people say a thermometer is the most important trout tackle?

Because temperature answers the three questions that decide a trout day: where are the fish, will they feed, and is it ethical to fish at all. A stream reading tells you whether you are in the feeding band — roughly 10–18 °C (50–64 °F) is game-on for rainbows and brookies — or whether to go find a spring seep or tributary mouth a few degrees colder. On lakes, a temperature profile locates the lake trout stratum more reliably than any rumor. And the same instrument enforces the conservation line: at 20 °C (68 °F) it tells you to stop. No lure choice, rod, or fly box changes outcomes as much as being in the right temperature — a $10 thermometer outranks a $1000 setup used in the wrong water.

How do I catch lake trout in summer without special gear — and with it?

The problem is purely depth: summer lakers sit at 20–30 m (66–98 ft), below casting range. The dedicated solution is downrigger trolling — a weighted cable carries your spoon or swimbait to an exact depth, you troll the cold band at 2–4 km/h (1.2–2.5 mph), and follow the bait marks on sonar. The budget solution is better than most anglers expect: vertical jigging. Drift over structure marking bait and fish, drop a 20–60 g (3/4–2 oz) jigging spoon, tube jig, or blade bait to bottom, and work it with lifts, flutters, and periodic bottom-pounds — a technique that outfishes trolling whenever fish are concentrated. No boat at all? Fish the calendar instead: ice-out and late fall put lakers within casting reach of shore.

What are the basics of ice fishing for trout?

Counterintuitive rule number one: fish shallow. Under ice the whole lake is trout temperature, so lake trout roam 5–20 m (16–66 ft) structure — points, humps, reef edges — and stocked rainbows and brookies cruise 1–5 m (3–16 ft) along shorelines, often within a rod's length of bottom ice. For lakers, fish aggressively: rip white tube jigs and heavy spoons with big lifts, because winter lakers are active predators that respond to commotion, and drill many holes rather than waiting one out. For rainbows and brook trout, finesse: small jigs tipped with waxworms or artificials, tiny spoons, subtle shakes, and dead-stick pauses. Everywhere, first ice and last ice fish best — and every ice trip starts with checking thickness and local ice-safety guidance, and season dates, before tactics matter at all.

I'm a beginner at a stocked trout pond — how do I actually catch one?

Stocked ponds are the friendliest trout classroom, and three facts unlock them. First, location: for a week or two after stocking, fish concentrate near the release area, then disperse along drop-offs, inlets, and the deeper cooler zones — ask when and roughly where the last stocking went in. Second, timing: early morning and evening beat midday by a wide margin, especially once summer warms the shallows. Third, technique: keep it small and simple — a small in-line spinner retrieved steadily, or where bait is legal, a worm or floating dough bait fished off bottom on a fine hook and light 1.5–2.5 kg (4–6 lb) line. Set the hook on anything unusual, wet your hands before touching fish, and know the pond's rules — many stocked fisheries are put-and-take, where keeping your limit is the intended point.

What does a year of trout fishing look like at northern latitudes?

Take 45–50°N — Ontario cottage country — as the template, and shift every date later going north, earlier going south. January–March: ice season; lake trout on structure, stocked rainbows shallow (where seasons are open — many lake trout seasons close in late winter to protect pre-spawn fish). April: ice-out — lakers shallow from shore, the year's sleeper opportunity. April–May: rainbow runs in tributaries. May–June: prime everything — streams in the feeding band, lakers still reachable at 10–20 m (33–66 ft). July–August: lakers deep at 20–30 m (66–98 ft); stream fishing shrinks to cold mornings under the 20 °C (68 °F) rule. September: relief — trout respread, big-meal season. October–November: fall spawns; feeding is hot but closures multiply, so this is the read-the-regulations season. December: first ice returns. The calendar is really a temperature schedule wearing months as a costume.

Should I keep trout or release them?

The honest answer is "it depends on which fishery you are standing in," because trout fisheries are engineered differently. Put-and-take stocked ponds and streams exist for harvest — those rainbows were raised to be eaten, many cannot survive summer anyway, and keeping a legal limit is the program working as designed. Wild native fisheries sit at the other pole: a wild brook trout population in a small headwater is a slow-growing, easily depleted treasure, and most serious anglers release them all, or keep only an occasional small fish where regulations invite it. Lake trout deserve the strictest personal rule of all — a 10 kg (22 lb) laker at 50°N can be 30–40 years old and irreplaceable on any human timescale, so keep a modest eating-size fish if you wish, and release the giants. Between the poles, let two questions decide: can this population replace this fish quickly, and does the regulation reflect that?

Do bass lures — jigs, tubes, crankbaits, topwaters — work for trout?

A few cross over, and most are lake trout stories. A plain white tube jig around 10 cm (4 in) is one of the great laker baits, jigged vertically in open water and under the ice, and a rattling lipless crankbait worked the same way calls lakers in from a distance. Small minnow-shaped crankbaits and jerkbaits, cast or trolled, take lakers near shore at ice-out and rainbows in lakes. What does not cross over is the bulky, cover-oriented gear: skirted jigs with trailers, Texas-rigged worms, spinnerbaits and bladed jigs have no real trout use — the trout's blade is the in-line spinner, its jig a small marabou. Hard topwaters draw only the odd strike; surface-feeding trout are eating insects, and that is the fly's job.

Are live minnows a good bait for trout?

For lake trout, yes, where it is legal. A lively or freshly dead minnow, cisco or sucker under a tip-up or on a deadstick rod set beside the jigging hole is a standard ice tactic, and a minnow on a jig head or behind a slip sinker takes lakers from shore at ice-out. Big rainbows and brook trout in lakes also eat minnows — fish make up more of the diet as trout grow. The catch is regulatory and ecological: many trout waters ban live baitfish outright, or all bait, because released bait-bucket fish have damaged trout lakes across the continent. Bait-caught trout are also hooked deeper, so where you plan to release fish, a lure or fly with a single barbless hook is the better choice.

Will talking or footsteps on the bank scare trout?

Talking, essentially never — the air-to-water boundary reflects almost all airborne sound, so conversation at normal volume does not reach the fish. Footsteps are a different physics problem: your boot thumps travel through the ground into the water as low-frequency vibration, which the trout's inner ear and lateral line read clearly, and a fish in a quiet pool can be alerted by heavy steps several meters from the edge. On soft or undercut banks the effect is worst. Walk softly and stay back from the lip; whisper all you like.

How much does wading noise spook trout?

More than most anglers believe, because wading transmits directly into the water — no air barrier to protect you. Crunching gravel, rolling rocks underfoot, and the bow wave you push while moving all radiate low-frequency alarm through the pool, and stream trout hold in an environment quiet enough that these signals stand out. The practical protocol: enter the water only when you must, move at the pace of pouring honey, plant each foot before lifting the next, and fish the near water before wading through it — the trout you would have stood on is often the best one in the run.

What does the lateral line do for a trout holding in current?

It is the fish's flow sensor. The lateral line reads pressure and water-particle motion along the whole body, which is how a rainbow holds station centimeters off a rock in turbulent water without wasting energy — it feels the cushion and the seams. The same organ detects the pressure wave of anything swimming nearby, so a nymph tumbling in the drift or a minnow kicking in dirty water announces itself before it is seen. This is why trout keep feeding confidently at night and in chocolate-milk runoff: vision degrades, the lateral line does not.

Can trout feel the vibration of my lure?

Yes, and some lures are designed around it. An in-line spinner's rotating blade throws a strong, regular pressure pulse that the lateral line reads from well beyond visual range — a big reason spinners out-fish subtler presentations for brook trout in stained beaver ponds and for rainbows in high, off-color spring flows. Spoons wobble a lower-frequency thump; flies are nearly silent and rely on sight. Rule of thumb: the worse the visibility, the more your offering should displace water — and in flat, clear, slow pools the same loud thump can spook fish instead.

Do stream trout really stay in the same spot all season?

To a remarkable degree, yes. Tagging and mark-recapture studies show resident stream trout holding a home range often shorter than 50–100 m (165–330 ft) of channel for an entire season, anchored to one feeding lie — a specific seam or cushion where drifting food concentrates and holding cost is low. Fish caught and released are routinely recaptured within meters of the original spot weeks later. The fidelity breaks for defined reasons: spawning migrations (sometimes many kilometers/miles), summer heat forcing a retreat to cold refuges, and winter moves into deep slow pools. Practical upshot: the good lie that produced in June will hold a trout in September — maybe the same trout, or its replacement.

How do trout move around in a lake, compared to a stream?

The stream logic inverts. In current, food comes to a stationary fish; in still water, the fish must go to the food — so lake-dwelling rainbows and brook trout become cruisers, patrolling repeating beats along shorelines, drop-offs, and weed edges, often surprisingly close to shore in the 1–4 m (3–13 ft) band when temperatures allow. Watch a rising lake rainbow and you can time its circuit: it will come back through on a rhythm, and casting ahead of the cruise path beats casting at the last rise. Lake trout cruise too, but in three dimensions, tracking pelagic baitfish schools through open water. The stream angler's question is "where is the lie?"; the lake angler's question is "where does the path go?"

What do stocked trout do after the truck leaves?

They mill, then they scatter. For the first days after stocking, hatchery rainbows hang in a confused crowd near the release point — no feeding lanes, no predator map, pellet-trained — which is why the stocking site produces absurdly well for a week and why that fishing feels the way it does. Telemetry studies then show steady dispersal: within two to four weeks fish have strung out along hundreds of meters (up to a quarter mile-plus) of shoreline or stream, settling into the best habitat they can hold against resident fish. Survivors grow warier and more wild-mannered by the month. So fish the stocking point early, and fish the good habitat — depth, cover, inflows — once the crowd thins.

Do lake trout migrate within their lake?

Yes — vertical and horizontal migrations on a basin scale, the largest home range of the three species. A big lake's lakers may summer over one deep basin, travel kilometers (miles) to traditional rocky spawning shoals in October, and spread across shallow flats all winter; telemetry on large lakes shows individual fish covering tens of kilometers (dozens of miles) in a season and returning to the same spawning shoal year after year. Daily movement is vertical: holding at temperature, rising to raid bait schools, dropping back. This is why laker fishing is a sonar-and-map game where bass fishing is a cover game — you are intercepting a traveler at a bottleneck, not knocking on a resident's door.

Do trout move and feed at night?

More than daytime anglers ever see, and the pattern strengthens with size and heat. In midsummer, when daytime stream temperatures brush the danger zone, the largest rainbows shift feeding into night and the dawn hour — moving out of secure lies into shallow tailouts and flats they would never occupy in daylight — and night is when the coldest water and the boldest fish coincide. Brook trout feed actively at dusk and dawn. Lake trout, built for dim light at depth, feed through low-light hours year-round, and under the ice the first and last light windows are consistently the hottest bite. If your local water only shows small fish at noon, the big ones may simply be working a different shift.

Do trout use wood, reeds, docks or mud bottom the way bass do?

Only wood, and only in moving water. For stream trout — brook trout above all — logjams, root wads and undercut banks are prime lies: overhead cover next to a food lane, and the biggest fish in the pool owns the best one. A bridge piling is simply one more current break. Still-water cover is a different story. Reeds and docks are not trout habitat; stocked rainbows and pond brookies cruise past reed edges and docks in spring and fall because insects hatch there and the water is still cold, and they leave when the shallows warm. Lake trout ignore wood and vegetation entirely. Mud bottom is the surprise: in productive trout lakes the big spring hatch is chironomids (midges) rising off soft-bottom shoals, and rainbows graze them methodically. So fish cover in streams, and temperature and food in lakes.

Do trout hug the bottom?

More than their reputation for rising suggests. In a stream, the water right along the bed is slowed by friction with the rocks, so a rainbow or brook trout resting its belly near the gravel spends a fraction of the energy of a fish a body-depth higher — and most of its food, the 80–90 percent taken underwater, drifts by at that level. That is why nymphs and egg patterns are fished dead-drifted near bottom. Lake trout do their own version: in summer, fish inside the cold 8–12 °C (46–54 °F) band often lie tight to bottom between feeding raids, which is why jigs and spoons worked from the bottom up are standard. The exceptions are the visible ones — rising stream fish, lakers chasing a jig 10 m (33 ft) up.

Why do trout lakes need to be deep or spring-fed?

Because a trout needs cold water and oxygen in the same place at the same time, and summer tries to separate them. A stratified lake in July offers warm oxygen-rich water on top and cold water below — but that cold bottom layer is sealed off from the atmosphere, so its oxygen only gets consumed, never replenished, until fall turnover. Only deep, relatively infertile lakes keep enough oxygen banked in the cold layer to carry trout through; in fertile green lakes, decomposition burns the deep oxygen out by midsummer. Springs solve the problem locally, injecting cold oxygenated water year-round — the reason tiny spring ponds can hold brook trout that a much larger warm lake cannot.

What is a "summer squeeze" or summer kill for trout?

It is the vise that closes on trout in marginal lakes every July and August. From above, the warm surface layer pushes down — too hot to survive in; from below, the deoxygenated bottom layer pushes up — cold enough but unbreathable. The habitable slice between them can shrink to a band a couple of meters (a few feet) thick, and in bad years — hot summers, fertile water, heavy algae die-offs — the two fronts meet and the trout have nowhere left, producing a summer kill. This squeeze is also an angling map: in late summer, every trout in such a lake is stacked in that narrow band, typically where roughly 10–16 °C (50–61 °F) water still holds oxygen.

Why do tailwaters below dams hold trout in places otherwise too warm?

Because a bottom-release dam is an artificial spring on an industrial scale. Water drawn from deep in the reservoir — the cold, stratified bottom layer — comes out at 8–14 °C (46–57 °F) all summer, creating kilometers of trout-grade temperature in regions where every natural river runs too warm. This is how world-class rainbow fisheries exist far south of natural trout latitude. The habitat has quirks: temperature is stable but flows swing with power generation (a safety issue — know the release schedule), the cold water can lag oxygen right at the dam, and the trout-viable zone fades downstream as the river warms back up, often within 15–30 km (10–20 mi) in hot climates.

Where do trout go right after spawning?

They drop back and eat. Spent rainbows ("drop-backs") slide downstream out of the tributaries through late spring, pausing in the deeper pools and river mouths to rebuild condition — thin, hungry, and famously aggressive, they are a better sporting target than the spawners ever were. In lakes, post-spawn rainbows scatter along shorelines while surface water sits in their comfort band. For the fall spawners the same drama runs in reverse season: brook and lake trout finish in November and feed hard in cold water until ice; by the following spring both are simply "spring pattern" fish. The universal rule: post-spawn trout are recovery feeders — find food concentrations, not spawning habitat.

Where are trout right after ice-out?

Shallow — all three species, and it is the easiest big-fish window of the year. With the whole lake sitting at a uniform 4 °C (39 °F), the temperature wall that exiles lake trout to the depths does not exist yet, so 10 kg (22 lb) lakers cruise shoreline rocks and wind-blown points in 2–5 m (6–16 ft) of water, catchable on a casted spoon from shore. Rainbows stage off tributary mouths, gathering for their spring spawning run as meltwater pulls them in. Brook trout slide to warming shallow bays. At 45°N this window runs roughly mid-April to mid-May; farther north it shifts weeks later and lasts longer.

Why do brook and lake trout spawn in fall but rainbows in spring?

Two lineages, two bets on the same prize: having fry hatch into spring abundance. Brook and lake trout — both chars, the ancient cold-water branch — spawn in October–November as water falls through 4–10 °C (39–50 °F); their eggs incubate slowly in cold gravel or rubble all winter and hatch at ice-out, first in line for the spring bloom. Rainbows, on the Pacific-salmon branch, spawn in April–May at 6–12 °C (43–54 °F) as flows rise; warmer water incubates the eggs in weeks instead of months, landing the fry in the same spring window. Photoperiod — day length, not temperature — is the master trigger for both, which is why spawn timing is so consistent year to year at a given latitude.

How does latitude change the trout fishing calendar?

Latitude sets both the timing and the shape of the season. Move north and every spring event slides later — a rainbow run that peaks in late March at 42°N peaks in early May at 48°N — while fall spawning slides earlier, compressing the summer between them. But the deeper effect is on habitat: at 40°N natural trout water survives only in mountains and tailwaters and the summer heat-danger window can run three months, while at 48°N whole watersheds stay trout-safe and the 20 °C (68 °F) problem may last two weeks or never arrive. Farther north still, ice season becomes the dominant fishery — lake trout country. Same three species, completely different years.

What does a cold front do to trout?

Less than it does to bass — and most of the damage is the sky, not the pressure. Trout are cold-water fish, so the temperature drop behind a front does not chill them into a sulk the way it does a shallow largemouth; in midsummer a cool snap can even revive a warm stream. What hurts is the cloudless, windless high that follows: bright light in clear water pushes rainbows and brook trout into shade, depth and broken water, and gives them every chance to inspect your offering. Fish it as a bright-day problem — longer, thinner leaders, smaller flies and lures, shaded banks and riffles, and the dawn and dusk hours. Lake trout at 20–30 m (66–98 ft) in summer barely notice; stay on the bait and the temperature band.

How good is a trout's sense of smell?

Elite — salmonids own one of the most sensitive olfactory systems in freshwater. This is the family whose sea-run members smell their way back to the exact natal gravel bed after years in the ocean, and rainbow, brook, and lake trout carry the same hardware, detecting some amino acids at parts-per-billion concentrations. In fishing terms: they smell prey, they smell each other's alarm substances, and they absolutely smell what your hands left on the lure. Scent matters most on slow presentations (bait, jigs soaked in a laker's face) and least on a spinner cranked past at speed.

Can sunscreen, bug spray, or gas on my hands ruin the bite?

Yes, and this is not superstition. DEET, sunscreen films, nicotine, and petroleum products transfer from skin to lure and dissolve into the water around it, and lab work on salmonids shows measurable avoidance of several of these compounds at tiny concentrations — a fish that tracks food by parts-per-billion chemistry notices your bug spray. The slower your presentation, the longer the fish samples the plume before committing. Wash or wipe your hands after applying anything, handle bait last, and some anglers rub hands with streamside dirt or grass — crude, but directionally right.

Are scent products legal and worth using for trout?

Two separate questions. Effectiveness: on slow presentations for stocked rainbows and for bait-caught fish, added scent plausibly helps and rarely hurts; on flies and fast lures the contact time is too short to matter much. Legality is the bigger issue: many jurisdictions restrict scent in specific waters — Ontario, for instance, has fly-fishing-only and artificial-lure-only waters where scented soft baits can be treated as bait, and several US states ban scents on gear-restricted trout streams. The regulation is per-water, not per-province, so read the exceptions for your specific stream before you squeeze anything onto a lure.

What is the best sunscreen for trout fishing that won't put trout off — scent-free, mineral or spray?

Fragrance-free mineral lotion or stick (zinc oxide / titanium dioxide); never a scented spray. PABA, the sunscreen active Keith Jones's Berkley work showed repelling bass, is gone from most modern formulas, and other actives are poorly studied. But trout are the fish to be careful for. Salmonids have the keenest noses in our line-up, and a classic 1956 study found that L-serine from human hand-rinse water alone alarmed migrating salmon at extreme dilution — clean skin is already a signal. So cover up with a UPF hoodie, buff and sun gloves, put lotion only on the face at home 20–30 minutes before, and wash the palms with unscented soap or rub them with streamside mud. Most at risk are the slow, close offerings: soft beads, eggs, bait and small plastics, plus the flies, tippet and fly line your fingers strip all day.

Does DEET bug spray damage fly line and scare trout — what insect repellent should trout anglers use?

Yes to both: buy 20 % picaridin lotion or wipes. DEET is a plasticizer: it softens and hazes fly-line coatings, monofilament, soft plastics, lure paint and sunglass frames, while picaridin leaves plastics alone. Keith Jones's Berkley work found bass strongly repelled by DEET at about one part per million, and trout are more scent-sensitive than bass; the 1956 L-serine finding showed salmon alarmed by plain human hand-rinse at extreme dilution. Treat clothing with permethrin at home and let it dry — never streamside, because wet permethrin is highly toxic to fish and to the aquatic insects trout eat. A head net keeps repellent off the hands entirely. Trout gear is the most DEET-vulnerable: the fly line sliding through your fingers on every cast, light tippet that cannot spare any strength, soft beads and trout worms. Apply with the back of the hand.

Which glue is safe for repairing trout lures, soft beads and trout worms — will super glue smell scare trout?

Match glue to material, then give it time. PVC plastisol — trout worms, grubs, most soft eggs — heat-welds with a lighter or soldering tip, the odourless fix, or bonds with a plastisol solvent glue such as Mend-It. TPE / ElaZtech micro plastics reject Mend-It and heat; a tiny drop of super glue (cyanoacrylate) holds them and leaves a hard spot you cannot rig through. Small hard baits take two-part epoxy or UV resin at lips and hook hangers, clear nail polish over chips. Every solvent glue smells until cured, and trout have the best nose of our eight species. Fresh glue on a slowly drifted bead or worm is the worst case, so cure overnight, air it, rinse it, and handle it with washed hands — the L-serine work showed salmonids react to human skin alone. Check whether your water allows soft baits at all.

What does the spring rainbow trout run look like?

Lake- and sea-run rainbows push into tributary rivers as flows rise and water climbs through 6–12 °C (43–54 °F) — on Great Lakes tributaries this is the famous "steelhead" run, fish of 2–6 kg (4–13 lb) stacking in pools and pushing upstream in pulses that follow rain. Females cut redds in gravel tailouts; males compete alongside. For anglers this concentrates the year's biggest rainbows into small water, which is exactly why ethics and law both tighten here: many jurisdictions close spawning reaches, and where fishing is open, target staging pools and traveling fish rather than paired fish working visible redds. At 44°N the run peaks around mid-April; timing slides two-plus weeks later per few degrees of latitude north.

What is a redd, and why must I never wade through one?

A redd is a trout's nest: a patch of streambed gravel the female excavates with her tail, deposits eggs into, and covers — visible as a distinctly clean, bright oval of turned-over gravel, typically 30 cm to 2 m (1–6.5 ft) across, standing out against the darker, algae-coated bed around it. The eggs incubate buried in that gravel for weeks to months, invisible underfoot. One wading boot compresses the gravel and can crush hundreds of eggs or entomb the fry — a single careless crossing can erase a female's entire year of reproduction. Learn to spot the clean-gravel signature, give redds a wide berth from October through spring (fall spawners' eggs overwinter in the gravel), and cross on bedrock or sand instead.

When and where does each trout species spawn?

Three schedules. Brook trout: October–November at 4–9 °C (39–48 °F), on gravel in spring-fed stream reaches and, distinctively, over groundwater upwellings in lakes — they can complete their cycle without a river. Lake trout: October–November at 8–11 °C (46–52 °F), at night over wave-washed rocky shoals and reefs in 1–10 m (3–33 ft), scattering eggs into rubble crevices with no nest at all. Rainbow trout: the spring outlier, April–May (March in the south, June in far-north systems) at 6–12 °C (43–54 °F), cutting redds in gravel riffles of flowing tributaries — rainbows genuinely need current, which is why landlocked lake populations often persist only through stocking. All three shift weeks earlier or later with latitude and altitude.

Do trout guard their eggs or young like bass do?

No — zero parental care, and the contrast with bass explains a lot about both fisheries. A male largemouth or smallmouth guards its nest and fry for weeks, which is why bed-fishing for bass is so contentious; a female trout covers her eggs with gravel, and both sexes leave, permanently. The trout strategy is protection by burial and by cold: eggs sealed in well-oxygenated gravel need no guard, just months of clean flowing water. Lake trout go further, scattering eggs into rubble and swimming away the same night. The angling implication cuts both ways — there is no guarding parent to exploit after the spawn ends, but disturbing the gravel itself (see redds) does damage no parent will ever repair.

Do stocked hatchery trout spawn successfully in the wild?

Mostly no, for stacked reasons. Many stocked waters simply lack what spawning requires — rainbows need flowing gravel tributaries a landlocked pond does not have. Where habitat exists, hatchery genetics still underperform: studies comparing hatchery- and wild-origin rainbow spawners in the same rivers repeatedly find hatchery fish producing a fraction — sometimes under half — of the surviving offspring per spawner, thanks to generations of selection for hatchery life rather than river life. Some lineages are sterile or triploid by design, so they cannot reproduce at all. The exceptions are real: naturalized rainbow runs (Great Lakes steelhead descend from stockings over a century old) prove establishment can happen. But as a default, a put-and-take fishery does not become self-sustaining — it persists only as long as the truck keeps coming.

Why are there closed seasons for trout, and why do they differ by species?

Closed seasons exist because spawning trout are concentrated, aggressive, and absurdly easy to catch — a season's worth of breeding adults packed into a few pools or one shoal, defending against anything thrown at them — and because angler traffic destroys redds even without a hook in the water. The dates track each species' clock, which is why they differ: brook and lake trout waters typically close in late September or early October ahead of the fall spawn and reopen in winter or spring, while rainbow closures protect April–May and often extend far enough to shield eggs still in the gravel. In Ontario these rules are set per Fisheries Management Zone and change at zone boundaries; everywhere, the closure calendar is per-water law, not folklore — read the current regulations before the trip, not after.

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.

What is the difference between a sipping rise and a slashing rise?

The fish is telling you what it thinks it is eating. A slow, confident sip — a nose barely breaking the film, a ring spreading — means the trout is eating something that cannot escape: a spent mayfly, a stuck emerger, a beetle. A slashing, splashy rise means it is attacking something that can escape — a skittering caddis, a fleeing minnow — and speed matters more than caution. This reads directly into tactics: sippers want a dead-drifted, helpless imitation and delicate delivery; slashers forgive drag and even reward a twitched or skated fly. Big fish sip more than small fish do, so the quietest rise in the pool is often the one to target.

When do I set the hook — is it different for flies and spoons?

Completely different clocks. On a dry fly, the classic error is striking the instant you see the rise — the fish has taken the fly but not yet turned down, and you pull it straight out of an open mouth; the old "God save the Queen" pause of roughly a second lets the trout turn before you tighten. On nymphs, the opposite: set instantly on any hesitation of the indicator or leader, because a drifting nymph is inspected and ejected in a blink. On spinners and spoons there is usually no decision at all — the fish grabs moving metal and the moving line hooks it; just keep tension and sweep. Lake trout jigging is its own case: the take is often just weight appearing, so set on anything different.

Why do I get so many short strikes and bumped lures?

Because trout are pursuit feeders that grab rather than inhale — a largemouth bass vacuums the whole lure in from a standstill, but a trout closes distance and nips, and if size, speed, or trailing hooks feel wrong, the nip is all you get. Short striking spikes when the lure runs bigger than the prevailing prey, when cold water has dulled the fish's closing speed, and among stocked fish still learning what food is. Fixes in order of reliability: go one size smaller, slow down or add pauses so the fish can catch up, and on flies trail a smaller pattern behind the first. A fish that bumps twice and vanishes has inspected you at close range and voted no — change something real before recasting.

Why do lake trout follow my lure all the way up without hitting?

The famous laker follow is real pursuit behavior, not indifference: a lake trout will track a jig or spoon for tens of meters (a hundred feet or more) of vertical water, matching its speed, deciding. Screens show it constantly — a mark rising with your lure. Two triggers convert followers. First, never slow down when you see the follow; speed up, because escaping prey accelerates and hesitation reads as wrongness. Second, the bottom-pound reset: drop the jig to bottom, thump it into the substrate a few times, and rip it upward — the puff of sediment and sudden flight imitates a flushed baitfish and takes fish that ignored everything else. If a follower peels off, drop straight back down; the same fish often eats on the second rise.

Why do trout takes feel like a tap — or like nothing at all?

Because the mouth is a grab, not a vacuum. A trout intercepting a drifting nymph simply closes its mouth on it while swimming at drift speed — there is no suction pop, no yank, often no line movement beyond a subtle hesitation, and the fish spits the fake within a second or two. The strike signal chain is visual before it is tactile: watch the indicator, the leader's entry point, or in clear water the fish itself (a white wink as the mouth opens is a take). Feel arrives only when the fish turns. This is why nymph anglers set on anything — a tick, a slow-down, an unexplained pause. The tap you felt was probably the third stage of an event that started a second earlier.

How do trout fight, and why do so many come off at the net?

It depends on the trout. A rainbow — and above all a steelhead — makes long, fast runs and cartwheeling jumps; a brook trout fights in short dashes toward the nearest undercut or log; a big lake trout stays deep, slugging and rolling on the line. What they share is a relatively soft mouth and, usually, a small hook on light line, so heavy pressure simply pulls the hook out. Let a soft rod and a light, smooth drag do the work, keep the rod bent through every jump and roll — barbless hooks hold only under constant tension — and expect one last bolt when the fish sees the net. Lead it head-first over a long-handled rubber net; never chase it from behind. In warm water keep the fight as short as the tackle allows: a trout played to exhaustion may not recover.

Where are lake trout in summer, and how deep is deep?

They are wherever the water is 8–12 °C (46–54 °F), which after stratification means one specific stratum — typically 20–30 m (66–98 ft) down in mid-latitude lakes, shallower at 50°N-plus where the whole lake stays colder. This is the most predictable positioning in freshwater fishing: run sonar until you mark bait (cisco, smelt) at temperature depth, because the lakers are with the food inside the band. They will make brief vertical raids above it to hit a school and drop back. Meanwhile stream rainbows and brookies compress toward whatever cold the system offers — spring seeps, tributary mouths, deep shaded pools — and the 20 °C (68 °F) rule governs whether you should be fishing for them at all.

Can I safely release a lake trout caught from deep water?

Usually yes — and this is a genuine anatomical gift. Lake trout are physostomous: the swim bladder connects to the esophagus by a duct, so a laker hauled up from 25 m (80 ft) can burp expanding gas out through its mouth instead of ballooning the way a physoclistous fish like a walleye does. The honest caveats: the fish must actually vent, so bring it up steadily rather than winching it; deep summer fish crossing into warm surface water take thermal stress on top of pressure change; and some fish fail to vent fully and float. Never puncture ("fizz") a lake trout — help a floater upright, move water over its gills, and let it burp and sound.

Why do trout gulp air at the surface, and why do lake trout "burp"?

Same duct, two directions. Because the swim bladder opens into the esophagus, trout adjust buoyancy the mechanical way: gulp air at the surface to inflate, burp it out to deflate — no slow gas-gland chemistry required. This design lets a trout change depth quickly without injury, which suits the rainbow's rise-to-the-surface feeding style and the lake trout's huge vertical range: tracking studies show lakers making regular vertical excursions of tens of meters (a hundred-plus feet) that would incapacitate a closed-bladder fish. The burp you hear from a netted laker is that valve doing its job.

Why is 20 °C (68 °F) the famous cutoff for trout catch-and-release?

Because two curves cross there. As water warms, a trout's metabolic oxygen demand rises steeply while the water's capacity to hold dissolved oxygen falls — so a fought fish, flooded with lactic acid, needs more oxygen exactly when less is available. Below about 18 °C (64 °F) released trout recover reliably; in the 20–23 °C (68–73 °F) band, studies show post-release mortality climbing sharply even for fish that swim away looking fine, because death often comes hours later. The fish does not have to die in your hands for you to have killed it. That is why the ethic is a hard line, not a suggestion.

When should I actually stop fishing for trout in summer?

Carry a thermometer and let it decide. A practical protocol used across North American trout country: below 18 °C (64 °F), fish normally; 18–20 °C (64–68 °F), fish early morning only — the daily minimum — land fish fast and keep them wet; at 20 °C (68 °F) and above, stop, full stop, and many fisheries agencies post "hoot owl" closures at exactly this threshold. Note the species spread: brook trout hit distress earlier, lake trout have usually already retreated below the thermocline where your surface reading is irrelevant, so summer heat is chiefly a rainbow-and-brookie stream problem. At 45°N latitude this typically means late July through mid-August mornings; farther south the danger window is far longer.

What are the ideal temperatures for rainbow, brook, and lake trout?

Three different thermostats, which is why they occupy three different habitats. Brook trout are the cold specialists: feeding peaks around 10–14 °C (50–57 °F), and chronic exposure above ~20 °C (68 °F) is lethal — hence their retreat to spring-fed headwaters. Rainbows are the most heat-tolerant of the trio, feeding well at 13–18 °C (55–64 °F) and surviving brief spikes past 24 °C (75 °F). Lake trout are the extreme cold end: preferred water is 8–12 °C (46–54 °F), and in summer they simply live wherever that band exists — usually 20–30 m (66–98 ft) down. Find the temperature and you have found the species.

Do trout feed in winter?

Yes — trout are cold-adapted, so winter slows them without shutting them down the way it nearly shuts down a largemouth. At 2–4 °C (36–39 °F) a stream rainbow's metabolism runs at a fraction of its summer rate: it still eats, but small items, taken from slow water, with no interest in chasing. Midge larvae and small nymphs dominate the winter stream menu. The striking exception is the lake trout, which is fully comfortable at these temperatures — under the ice a laker cruises and hunts as actively as it does all year, which is why it is a premier ice-fishing target across Canada and the northern US.

Can stocked trout survive the summer in my local pond?

Only if the pond has a cold refuge, and most do not. The requirements are unforgiving: a deep zone or spring inflow that stays below about 21 °C (70 °F) all summer while still holding dissolved oxygen — a rare combination, because shallow ponds warm throughout and deeper stratified ponds often lose oxygen exactly in the cold bottom layer trout would need. This is why many agencies run put-and-take programs, stocking rainbows in spring on the open assumption that fish not caught by July will die; it is a harvest fishery by design, and keeping your limit there is the intended outcome, not a sin. At northern latitudes (roughly 46°N and up) or in spring-fed ponds, genuine carryover is possible.

Is there really a pecking order among trout in a pool?

Yes, and it is one of the most useful facts in stream fishing. Stream salmonids maintain a dominance hierarchy over feeding lies: the biggest fish occupies the single best position — typically the spot where the food lane is richest and the holding current cheapest, often the head of the pool or the prime seam — and defends it with charges and displays, while subordinates take progressively worse stations. Two consequences for anglers: the best drift in the pool is, almost by definition, where the best fish lives; and when the dominant fish is removed, the next-largest promotes into the vacant lie within days. That is why a famous "big fish spot" keeps producing big fish year after year — the address outlives the tenant.

Do trout defend their spawning areas?

Fiercely, while spawning is under way — but only until it ends. A female rainbow or brook trout defends the redd she is cutting, driving off other females and egg-eating intruders, while males fight each other over access to her; a spawning riffle is a continuous low-grade battlefield. This aggression is exactly why targeting fish on redds is poor sport: they attack anything near the nest out of defense, not feeding, and every fight costs energy the spawn needs. Once spawning finishes, defense stops dead — trout provide no parental care, and the gravel itself is the only guardian the eggs get. Lake trout skip territorial defense entirely, broadcasting eggs communally over shoals at night.

Do lake trout school like other fish?

Not true schooling, but meaningful aggregation — and the difference matters to how you fish them. Lake trout are loosely social hunters: where a cisco or smelt school stacks up, multiple lakers converge and work it, so marking one fish on sonar usually means others share the area, and a hooked fish frequently comes up with followers shadowing it (always drop a second lure down immediately). They also aggregate predictably at spawning shoals in fall and at ice-out structure. But between those concentrations, individuals spread across huge volumes of water. Treat lakers as a "find one, expect several" species clustered on bait — not as a school you can sit on all day.

Can a moderately fertile (mesotrophic) lake hold trout?

Only if it is deep enough to win the summer race. A trout needs cold water and oxygen in the same place — roughly 6–7 mg/L of oxygen, in water below about 20 °C (68 °F). In a stratified lake that place is the cold layer under the thermocline, which is sealed off from the air all summer and only loses oxygen as sinking organic matter decays. The more fertile the lake, the faster that bank account drains. A truly infertile lake stays habitable year-round; a mesotrophic lake is the borderline case — a deep basin may carry rainbows or lake trout through to fall turnover, while a shallower one of the same fertility runs out in late summer. Ask about depth and late-summer oxygen before you ask about stocking.

What does fall turnover mean on a trout lake?

Liberation. As surface water cools to match the depths — typically at 10–12 °C (50–54 °F) in late September or October at mid-latitudes — wind mixes the whole lake, erasing the thermocline that held lake trout in their summer band and re-oxygenating the deep water. For a week or two the mixing water is turbid and fishing can go strange, but the aftermath is the point: with the entire lake at trout temperature, lakers roam every depth, and rainbows and brook trout ride the cooling water back into the shallows. Turnover on a trout lake is not the setback it is on a bass lake — it is the opening bell of the best cold-water feeding of the fall.

Why do trout refuse my fly or lure even when they are clearly feeding?

Because inspection is cheap for a drift feeder. A rainbow holding in current lets the river deliver food past its nose, so it can afford to examine every item at close range and reject anything that drags unnaturally or does not match the insect it is keyed on — this "selectivity" is a feeding efficiency strategy, not intelligence. During a heavy hatch a trout may lock onto one prey image (size and silhouette first, color a distant third) and ignore everything else. Brook trout are far less picky, and lake trout, hunting baitfish in dim deep water, are hardly selective at all — the refusal problem is mostly a rainbow-in-clear-water problem. Fix drag and size before you change patterns.

Does tippet or leader diameter really matter, or is that fly-shop mythology?

It matters, but mostly not for the reason people think. There is little evidence trout "see the line and know," — the real mechanism is drag: thicker tippet is stiffer, catches more current, and pulls the fly across the water at a speed no natural insect drifts at, and a drift feeder rejects that instantly. Thinner tippet also lets small flies move naturally and sink faster. So drop diameter when fish refuse a good pattern in slow, clear water, and go heavier without guilt in fast, broken, or stained water — the fish cannot analyze what it cannot inspect.

Can trout on a stream actually see me standing on the bank?

Yes — better than almost any fish you chase. Light bends at the surface, so a trout looks up through a circular "window" and can see objects above the bank line, especially tall, moving, sky-lined ones; the shallower the fish, the smaller its window, but a bank angler standing upright at 5 m (16 ft) is usually inside it. Stream trout also face upstream, so approaching from downstream keeps you in their blind zone. Stay low, move slow, keep trees or bank behind you instead of open sky, and remember the fish you spooked warns the pool: a bolting trout puts every fish near it on alert.

What light conditions are best for trout fishing?

Low light, almost universally. Trout eyes lack eyelids and adjustable pupils, so bright midday sun in clear water pushes rainbows and brook trout into shade, depth, or broken "riffle-roof" water, and makes them maximally able to inspect your offering; dawn, dusk, and overcast days flatten that disadvantage and bring big fish into the open. The exception is the lake trout, which already lives at depths of 20–30 m (66–98 ft) in summer where surface light barely matters — laker fishing runs on depth and bait location, not sky. In midsummer heat the low-light rule doubles, because dawn is also the coolest, best-oxygenated hour.

Do UV finishes and bright colors actually catch more trout?

The honest answer is "sometimes, and less magically than the packaging claims." Juvenile salmonids have ultraviolet-sensitive cones but largely lose them as adults, so adult-trout UV marketing runs ahead of the biology. What is well supported: contrast against the background matters more than exact hue, deep water strips red and orange first so silhouette and flash dominate for lake trout, and freshly stocked rainbows — raised on brown pellets, naive to everything — do hit bright chartreuse, orange, and pink at rates wild fish rarely match. For wild stream fish, match the prey; for stockers and stained water, be visible.

Do trout see blue, green and yellow? How is their colour vision different from a bass's?

Trout have the best-documented — and probably the richest — colour vision of the fish on this site. An adult rainbow carries three working cone types — blue, green and red — where bass and walleye make do with two and read blue as dark; juveniles add an ultraviolet cone that mostly disappears with age. So a trout genuinely sees blue. That matters in big, clear lakes, where blue and green light penetrate deepest: blue-and-silver and green-and-silver spoons are trolling staples for lake trout and lake-run rainbows. In streams, green means olive — the colour of most nymphs, sculpins and the flies that imitate them. Yellow and gold are visibility colours: a gold blade or yellow-bodied spinner in stained or low-light water. Still, size, silhouette and drift come first; colour is the third thing a trout judges.

Does a bright moon help or hurt trout fishing?

For night fishing it usually hurts. Trout that feed after dark — big stream fish in summer heat above all — do it under cover of darkness, leaving secure lies for shallow tailouts and flats; night-fishing tradition is firm that the darkest nights, new moon or heavy cloud, are the best, and that a bright moon over clear, shallow water leaves those fish as wary as at noon. Your own moon-shadow and rod flash spook them too. There is also an old belief that after a bright full-moon night the next day's bite is slow because fish fed all night; many anglers hold it, but it is not well tested. Lake trout, deep in summer, are little affected either way. If the moon is bright, fish the shaded bank, deeper runs, or wait until it sets.

What happens to trout during the ice season?

They divide by species. Lake trout treat winter as home turf: with the whole lake at 2–4 °C (36–39 °F) they abandon the deep band entirely and hunt baitfish over 5–20 m (16–66 ft) structure, often shockingly shallow under first ice — the basis of the northern winter fishery. Stocked rainbows and brook trout in lakes cruise shallow, 1–5 m (3–16 ft), circling under the ice looking for invertebrates and minnows. In streams, resident trout pod up in the deepest, slowest pools and feed in brief midday windows on midges and small nymphs, conserving energy in water that asks almost nothing of them metabolically. Nothing is hibernating; everything is just running slower — except the laker, which is running at full speed.