Budd :

I'm a fisheries biologist with the State of Vermont's Fish & Wildlife
Department. Last fall and early this spring I received a number of calls
about large brown trout (that we stock in a nearby 2,200-acre lake) having
very strange grubs or insect larvae in their stomach. Of course, without
seeing the stomach contents, I couldn't comment on what the trout might have
been eating, but I told the anglers to keep the stomachs next time they
found such things when cleaning their fish. Over the winter ice-fishing
season, and through this spring, several anglers brought stomachs from brown
trout ranging from 2 to 10 pounds into the local baitshop. The owner of the
shop put the stomachs in the freezer, then called me one day this spring
when he had 8 or 10 stomachs in ziplock bags. I told him to thaw them out
and I'd be down in an hour or so.

I brought all my insect guides, minnow guides etc etc - anything I thought
might help me identify the strange prey these brown trout were eating. But,
when I got to the baitshop and picked up the first "grub", I started to
laugh. When I told the baitshop owner it was a "senko", he immediately
realized I was right and turned red, embarrassed he didn't realize it
himself right away. Anyways, out of the 10 stomachs I examined that day
with the strange "grubs" in them, every one of them turned out to be plastic
baits of some sort. One stomach from an 8-pound brown trout had 14
different plastic lures in it, ranging from senkos to tube jigs to flukes to
broken pieces of what looked like plastic worm bits.

Now - this is what I think is happening. I'm also a bass fisherman, and I
fish in our local Bassmasters club. So, I know how fast bass fisherman go
through soft plastics. At the end of a day's fishing, whether for a
tournament or just for fun, the floor of my boat and my friends boats are
littered with soft plastics that are torn and won't stay on hooks anymore.
Most ethical fisherman who care about the environment, the lakes they fish,
and the fish they're after take those plastics home and dispose of them
properly. However, I have personally witnessed countless times, fisherman
tearing off a plastic worm and throwing it into the lake. Maybe sometimes
the plastics blow out of the bass boats as they tear across the lake at
70mph. No matter how these plastics are getting into the lake, I have now
seen first hand that trout WILL eat them. Not only do they eat them as they
gently sway and sink to the bottom of an 80-foot deep lake, in my opinion
they are also being picked up after they've reached the bottom. Brown trout
will forage the bottom of lakes, and in the winter under the ice will do so
in very shallow water even. Since seeing the plastics in the stomachs, I've
spoken to more and more trout fisherman and I'm finding this is a much too
common occurence - alot of the trout fisherman are getting brown trout with
plastics in their stomachs in January, February, and March.

Anyone who is familiar with Vermont knows that our bass fishing season ends
in November, and that from December to mid-April our lakes are buried under
2 to 3 feet of ice, so these plastics being eating by brown trout are not
fresh. It could also be that the plastics were picked up by the trout in
the previous summer and fall, and haven't been digested or passed. This
worries me even more since I don't know what the full impact of bass
fisherman tossing their used plastics into the lake could be on the brown
trout.

So - to answer your question - YES trout WILL soft plastic baits, and
rigging that way for them is likely a hot technique in certain situations to
take them.

But more importantly to the bass fisherman (and all plastic bait users) is
DO NOT throw your used plastics in the water. If fish will hit them when
they're on your hook, they certainly will hit them and swallow them when
they're not !

For work, I will be making a targeted attempt to educate Vermont anglers on
this issue. Please spread the word !

Shawn




"Budd Cochran" wrote in message
...
Greetings from the S.E. Utah desert country.

Spent a few hours yesterday afternoon in the local mountains at a popular
trout lake, Oowah Lake, near my home in Moab, UT. had considerable success
in catching 1-3 pound Rainbows on red / white and black / white spoons,
but
my wife discovered something I though was rather odd.

She rigged up with a small portion of a 6" Senko clone on an old but sharp
Aberdeen hook and began getting solid bites. Exposing the hook point more
got her five nice trout in about 30 minutes (she doesn't fish a lot)
before
a big one broke her line.

I changed over to an Eagle Claw Tru-Turn and another chunk of the plastic
worm and after 7 more fish ( I caught 10 on spoons) caught the biggest
'Bow
of the afternoon, about 17 inches long.

Ok, does anybody have any ideas about this? I've never heard of anything
like this ... Trout on Bass lures. I'm gonna have to try it again. VBG

All comments welcome.

Budd