The Speckled Trout Without The Speckles

Anglers like to debate topics that don't have easy answers. Like what fish is the toughest fighting? The most glamorous? The hardest to catch? The best eating? Plenty of candidates are found in every category.

But when the question is asked, what fish is the most rare and most beautiful, the list of contenders quickly dwindles. That is when the aurora trout--like the Aurora Borealis rippling across the northern night sky--rises to the top of almost everyone's list.

Auroras were found originally only in Whirligig and Little Whitepine, two small lakes in northeastern Ontario, near the renowned lake trout fishery of Lake Temagami. When biologists examined the trout in the early 1900s, they concluded that they were looking at a new and distinct species of fish. They dubbed the trout Salvelinus timagamiensis in recognition of its individuality and the gnarled white pine and granite trout-filled region it called home.

Fifty years later, subsequent scientific scrutiny suggested that the original verdict was rendered too hastily. The aurora trout, these biologists suggested, was too similar to the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) to be classified as distinct. They advocated that it's a color variant of the brookie, and therefore a subspecies, which they called Salvelinus fontinalis temagamiensis.

While the aurora's ancestry may be a topic for debate, no one disputes the fact that the fish is rare, beautiful, and threatened with extinction as a result of acid rain.

If you're lucky enough to catch an aurora trout, or catch a glimpse of one in the wild, you will see immediately why the fishery folk had so much difficulty classifying it. Stunning as it is, it looks like a speckled trout, only without the spots along its flanks and the blue halos that ring the red dots.

The same crisp, olive-green back with black, wavy, wormlike vermiculations appear. The telltale leading edge of the anal, pelvic, and pectoral fins are as white as new fallen snow, contrasting with gleaming black borders. And in fall, when water temperatures chill and male auroras search out shallow, gravely springs and upwellings along shore on which to spawn, their bellies turn as brilliant orange and red as an autumn sunset.

Like the ubiquitous speckled beauties we find in lakes, rivers, streams, creeks, and ponds from the northeastern half of Canada down through the Great Lake's states and the Appalachians, as far south as Georgia, the Aurora trout not only looks like its brook trout brethren, but behaves similar as well.

A 10- to 12-inch female aurora trout lays as few as 200 eggs, while a three- or four-pound fish may deposit as many as 5,000 or more eggs. Still, that's not many for so glorious and fragile a creature.

Like the brook trout, the aurora also is a bit of a knucklehead. Akin to the popular high school cheerleader--handsome and personable but not necessarily the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Unlike the wily brown or even the rainbow, the aurora trout is rarely selective in its feeding habits. If something moves and looks the least bit edible, an aurora likely will try to wrap its lips around it. In this respect, the aurora and the brook trout are the bigmouths of the trout clan.