Mythical Tiger Trout
Written by: John Kesler, Fall Obsession Field Staff
When it comes to trout fishing I'm particularly blessed. My home in the Gunnison valley of Colorado puts me within minutes of world class trout fishing for brown, rainbow and lake trout. A little farther out I can find brook trout and a couple species of cutthroats. If I looked really hard it was even possible to find golden trout. I could wake up one day and say I'm going to go catch any one or multiple of the aforementioned species without any undue amount of effort especially for an ex fishing guide. However in my two and a half decades of fly fishing there is one species I have only managed to catch but once and seen but thrice; tiger trout.
Tigers are a cross of brook and brown trout. In the wild they are incredibly rare however in hatchery conditions they can be produced. Colorado for years only made small numbers of tigers due to the cost and process. In one lake I frequented I got lucky and caught one back in 2020 and a couple clients caught two more in the following years. Tigers were not a species I would advertise that I could take clients to target. If we got lucky it would have just been icing on the cake. This being the world I lived in I was very intrigued when a good friend said he had a line on a lake with a population of Tiger trout in it. Given he had never caught one and I would like to see about upping my catch rate from a single fish, that was all we needed to begin plotting an adventure for the next weekend.
The day of adventure came and Robby rolled up at sunrise and I biffed my gear into his truck bed. After a brief roadblock from some escaped donkeys we got to the lake in good order. We rigged up the fly rods and hit the water. Neither of us having fished or laid eyes on the lake we both agreed the corner out of the gentle morning breeze would be the best place to start. We were in fact wrong but it would take a couple hours to figure that out. Robby started off stripping a streamer and I alternated between dry droppers and nymph rigs as we worked our way around the lake.
We neither caught nor saw more than a few fingerlings rising for the first hour and a half. Hopping each other from spot to spot Robby ultimately secured himself a nice spot on a large rock. I caught up with him a little while later and he mentioned he thought he saw a pair of tiger trout cruise by not but a few minutes earlier. Given our complete lack of bites and sightings in the previous hour this got us fairly excited. I set up a few yards down the beach and rolled a nymph rig out and let it sit. We saw a few fish of reasonable size splash and swirl on the surface adding to our optimism. They appeared to be tigers but it very much could have been a figment of our imagination manifesting the species we hoped to catch.
Robby, still stripping the streamer, had a few good tugs that never hooked up which again gave us reason to hope but we had yet to actually land anything. For a couple of ex fishing guides it was bordering on mild embarrassment. I rerolled my nymph rig and was surprised to watch the indicator make for the bottom. I set the hook and was greeted by thin air and the rig flying at my face. Having dodged many clients errant rigs over the years I managed to duck it and lay it back out where it had come from. I was again surprised to watch the indicator dip under water and I once again went for the hook set. This time my luck held out and the line came tight with the fish I had yet to identify making a good run.
After a few minutes I got the fish close enough to tell that it was indeed a tiger trout. Robby and I let out a bunch of excited nonsense and got ready to land the fish. I passed my net to Robby who deftly scooped it up. We fist bumped exclaiming we had indeed achieved what we set out to do. A few quick pictures and the trout was back in the water. We were pretty stoked that the rumors and planning and more effort for two experienced anglers than we expected had panned out.
Now we had to get Robby his first tiger trout. This would prove easier said than done as over the next hour we only managed to land a few Cutthroat trout between us, a species on any other day on any other lake we would have been stoked to catch but here was somewhat diminished by the presence of mythical tigers. I did manage to snap off another tiger trout during hook set in this time period. My stomach made a bit of a grumbling noise so I rooted around my bag for a granola bar and a cheese stick. I was chewing on the cheese stick when a fish made a large splash off to my left so I lazily flopped my nymph right in the general direction.
Peeling the wrapper and not really looking at my indicator out of the corner of my eye I noticed the white bubble disappearing into the depths. With my mouth full and hands half occupied with the wrapper I whipped the rod tip into the air and was greeted by a fish taking line in the opposite direction. A moment later the trout attempted to make orbit and came flying several feet out of the water. This happened several more times, each its own pucker moment as it was a particularly fine specimen of a tiger trout on the end of my line. I finally got it wrangled and Robby was there to deftly net the fish again. After more pictures and excitement we resumed fishing hoping for Robby to finally get a tiger. For the next while Robby proceeded to land one cutthroat after another until finally a tiger took his fly. Tigers fight far above their weight class and much like my second fish Robby's made several attempts at achieving flight before we managed to land it. Mission accomplished!
It had only taken us the better part of four hours to catch but three Tiger trout and despite that we were beyond stoked. We kept fishing the same spot for a little while longer before deciding we should make our way around back to the truck. Fishing along the way of course. This precipitated one of the most ridiculous couple hours of fishing of our lives. I hadn't gone more than a hundred yards when there cruising the shallow weed beds was a pair of tiger trout. I flopped the dry dropper rig I had on in front of them and was elated to watch the front fish come up and slurp the dry fly. The fish came off after a minute or so but we were both stoked that there were more tigers to be had.
Working our way down the beach we became aware of a spectacle neither of us had seen before. There were legions of damsel flies zipping around and the tiger trout were launching themselves out of the water intercepting them. Ive seen plenty of fish eating bugs off the surface, even a few launching into the air but this was something else entirely. In my experience trout of all species have a tendency to get very zoned in on eating one thing at a time, In this case the damselflies. I shouldn't have been surprised given the fighting power and aerial acrobatics of the hooked fish but we had little trouble using the same dry droppers we were using earlier.
We slowly worked down the rocky shore tossing the flies at cruising fish or the mighty splashes of the fish engaged in aerial warfare. Over the next while we each proceeded to catch tiger after tiger. Robby even found a damselfly imitation in his box and caught several on that. For a couple of anglers who had caught one or zero tiger trout before it was an incredible experience. Realizing we had blown right past our planned return time we reached the end of the beach and opted to call it a day. Luckily our wives are experienced in us showing up home long past when we said we thought we would be home due to what we deemed as spectacular fishing.
We hit the truck and both realized we were a little sun burned and dehydrated but beyond happy with how the day panned out. After what probably should have been a blood oath to tell only trusted friends about the place we reminisced about the day all the way home. Plans to head back are already in the works.
