Rainbow Trout

BLOOMINGTON -- Eight miles west of this small Garrett County town, the North Branch of the Potomac River is being reborn through a progressive system of trout management, and the river below Bloomington Dam eventually may become a Mecca for fly fishermen on the East Coast.But already in Maryland, there are two trout rivers that are the stuff of dreams made from what once were close to being nightmares.Those rivers are the Lower Savage in Western Maryland and the Gunpowder in Baltimore County.

About 25,000 sun-gleaming, tail-flicking rainbow trout were dumped into Carroll County ponds and streams this month in preparation for the opening of trout season Saturday.By summer, Carroll anglers will have snagged most of the trout. Their short lives give their wild cousins, in the relatively few Maryland streams where trout live naturally, a better chance to survive and flourish.The goal of the trout stocking program "is to provide angling for trout you can take home and eat," said Charlie R. Gougeon, a central region fisheries biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources.

If you went to put-and-take areas of the lower Gunpowder River for the opening of trout season there yesterday, you know already that it was largely a waste of time. If you are planning to go today, don't bother, because the areas have not been stocked.The reason, according to the Department of Natural Resources, is that water levels in the Gunpowder below the Loch Raven Reservoir dam are too low to allow the scheduled stocking of 1,800 9- to 17-inch brown and rainbow trout.Even though there were heavy rains last week, a spokesman for DNR said, water levels in the reservoir have not recovered from last year's drought and are still several feet below the spillway.

As the late-winter sun warmed the woods lining Gunpowder Falls, a truck pulled up with a delivery of 3,000 feisty rainbow trout -- and Victor Broy got to thinking about lazy days and The Big One That Got Away."

Kenneth Poff was among the first to hit the Gunpowder Falls and cast a line yesterday in what has become as much a rite of spring in Maryland as the first pitch at Opening Day for the Orioles: the official reopening of the trout season in Maryland."

Albert Powell raised a big, fat rainbow trout. Charlie Gougeon put that fish in the Little Gunpowder River. Chris Shaw reeled it in. His dad, Robert, enjoyed a nice trout dinner. How's that for chain of custody? It's not often in telling the story of a noteworthy catch - and I've passed along a bunch to you - that one can say with a great degree of certainty how a specific fish arrived at the end of a particular hook and then to a single plate. So, indulge me this one time. Because this is not only a story of how Shaw acquired his bragging rights, but also a story of the extraordinary work done by the biologists and field staff at the Maryland Fisheries Service.

A glint of silver and a flash of fractured light -- blue, green and red -- mark the spot where a moment before a fish had been. In the dappled fast-water world of mountain streams, the rainbow trout reigns supreme. It is a fish that stirs the imaginations of fishermen and cooks alike.Named for the "rainbow" band that runs the length of its olive-green skin, the rainbow trout is America's most popular sport fish. Wild trout are prized by fly fishermen for their fierce spirit and wily nature (and "catch and release" is the honored rule.

On a day declared Code Red by the National Weather Service, a rusty brown wood thrush sang its song in the cool cover of trees in the Sweathouse Branch of Gunpowder Falls State Park, unaware that it was unhealthful to be outside."

ANNAPOLIS -- Trout and black bass are each, in their own right, a rite of spring -- and each, given the impact of increasing fishing pressure, is managed with an eye toward ensuring the propagation or stabilization of the species.At a media workshop early last week at the Department of Natural Resources, director of freshwater fisheries Robert Bachman assessed Maryland's management programs for trout and black bass.In a number of Maryland counties, trout fishing is a put-and-take process that provides four weeks to three months of super fishing and then fades away until the arrival of new hatchery stocks the next spring.