Maryland Department of Natural Resources biologists relocate native brook trout into a stream. Maryland DNR photo.
In early fall, as the leaves on the trees in Maryland’s western counties signal their seasonal transition, brook trout prepare for a change as well as their spawning season will begin soon. During this time, males’ colors become more brilliant, and females create underwater nests called redds where they will lay their eggs.
Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) biologists have a plan for a different type of change of scenery for a group of these native fish. They will carefully collect and move adult brook trout to a different stream where DNR and its partners are working to bring back local populations from zero.
Brook trout are Maryland’s only native salmonid. Despite their name, they are a type of char. Because they require cold, pristinely clean water to survive, brook trout are an indicator species for environmental conditions. Their habitat has been heavily impacted by urbanization and land development, and they are listed as a species of greatest conservation need in Maryland.
Maryland DNR photo
Streams near areas where impervious surfaces such as buildings and parking lots dominate the landscape often have warmer, more polluted water that threatens brook trout survival. One survey by DNR’s Maryland Biological Stream Survey found that the vast majority of brook trout populations occur only in watersheds where less than 1.5% of the ground area is covered by impervious surfaces.
Once widespread in Maryland, brook trout have been eliminated from about 62% of their historic range. They are now primarily found in Garrett and Allegany counties, but strongholds also exist in the midwest and central regions of Maryland. Within the subwatersheds where they persist, they occupy only 1% to 10% of the area they once inhabited.
Coldwater habitats healthy enough for their reintroduction are increasingly rare. With the support of $477,900 in grant funds from the Chesapeake Watershed Investment for Landscape Defense (Chesapeake WILD) program, Maryland set out to identify and repopulate streams that have suitable conditions for brook trout survival but no recent records of their presence.
The method DNR biologists are using for the first phase of this effort is translocation—identifying healthy source populations, capturing adult fish, and moving them to other streams with the hope they will acclimate and spawn.
Because brook trout populations in this region have been isolated from one another for centuries by distance and both natural and man-made barriers, natural recolonization of unoccupied habitat is not possible in most cases. For this reason, biologists carefully match source populations with translocation sites with similar features to ensure local adaptations continue to support the fish’s chance of successful reproduction.
Maryland DNR photo
The diligent selection appears to have paid off in the first year of this reintroduction effort. In 2024, 300 brook trout were moved to three unoccupied streams, and electrofishing surveys on those streams in summer 2025 found newly hatched, or young of year, brook trout—a clear sign that natural reproduction had occurred.
This fall, DNR biologists repeated the process to augment the populations in those same streams with 150 new spawning-age fish.
The process begins with disinfecting a truck equipped with a fish holding tank, typically used by trout stocking crews, then filling it with fresh stream water. Once on site at the source stream, biologists use backpack electrofishing gear to stun fish for easy netting and collection into holding buckets. When the target number of adult brook trout is collected and loaded into the truck’s tank, they are driven to the release site. Before release, 50% of the holding tank’s water is replaced with water from the destination stream to allow the fish to acclimate before they are distributed up and down their new home waters.
The repopulated streams will be surveyed again next summer for signs of successful reproduction. The hope is that young of year brook trout that result from the translocations will grow to adulthood and reproduce in these streams to establish self-sustaining populations.
Maryland DNR photo
Brook trout are highly valuable to Maryland for their recreational, economic, cultural, and biological importance. Trout fishing has been a symbol of outdoorsmanship in Maryland since frontier times. Legendary early American hunter, angler, and writer Meshach Browning described western Maryland’s landscape in his book “Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter,” noting that there were “in all the streams trout without number.”
Today, the upper Savage River above Savage River Reservoir in Garrett County remains a fruitful and high-profile native trout fishery where anglers can expect to catch stream-bred brook trout. However, the risk of losing brook trout elsewhere in the state is high. Current predictions indicate that warming water temperatures over the next 75 years could dramatically reduce brook trout populations statewide.
A portion of the Chesapeake WILD funds will be used for planting trees and protecting land to mitigate the temperature rise and the impact of development.
In the next stage of this project, DNR plans to gather eggs and milt from brook trout in the field, raise the offspring to fingerling size in a hatchery setting, and introduce those young fish into additional suitable habitats where this native species is currently locally extinct.
DNR’s project partners include Western Maryland Resource Conservation and Development Council, Trout Unlimited, Frostburg State University, Allegany County Chapter of the NAACP, Midlothian Water Company, Garrett County Government, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, and The Nature Conservancy.
Article by Sinclair Boggs, marketing strategist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fishing and Boating Services.
