Wild tiger (trout) spotted in the Chattahoochee National Forest
Cathy Valancius was fly fishing in a remote area of the Chattahoochee Forest recently and crossed paths with a creature that is very rare to find in the wild. She sent me an email announcing that, with the “stripes,” it had to be a tiger.
I said I had never seen a wild one and after seeing the picture I confirmed that it must be a tiger. This was not a big tiger but a mature one. They are known to have great appetites and can potentially eat almost anything smaller than they are. I have spent many, many hours camping, hiking, photographing and yes, many hundreds of hours fishing those mountains and never a tiger to be found by me, just Rainbows, Brooks and Browns along with bears, coons, armadillos, foxes and a bobcat.
How did Cathy happen to be lucky enough to come across a tiger? Simple, Cathy was being very quiet, her movements were slow and deliberate, trying not to move limbs or cast a long shadow that could be seen. Cathy was fly fishing and probably wearing camo to blend in with the background. Along with being as stealthy as a ninja, she was in the right place at the right time and just plain lucky.
The watershed Cathy was fishing in has not been stocked by the DNR in many years and all the fish there are wild or stream-born. It is home to a good population of brook trout, brown trout and rainbows. The small tributary where Cathy saw the tiger has mostly brook and browns and rarely a rainbow trout.
Brooks and browns spawn in late fall and early winter. Brook trout are actually members of the Char Family and not a true trout. Tiger trout are rare in the wild. The parent species are not closely related, being members of different genera and possessing mismatched numbers of chromosomes. If by chance, the two different species get together and have a “fling,” a tiger trout could possibly result.
That’s why wild tiger trout may be the rarest of the trout family. They are a hybrid of a male brook trout and female brown trout. They are distinctive, the dark mottled pattern or vermiculations of a brook trout’s back extending down their sides to their belly. That bold pattern earned them the name tiger trout.
I have fished the small tributary that Cathy was at regularly for about 40 years and I have never seen a brook longer than 8 inches or a brown longer than 10 inches, with the average being 4 to 6 inches respectively. Browns produce about 900 eggs per pound of fish, so a 6 inch fish may produce only 180 eggs or less. And if some of the eggs are fertilized by a brook trout, only 5% or so of the young fish will live a year.
There is a chance that Cathy caught the only tiger trout ever to live in that stream. Tigers are sterile and cannot reproduce and never existed prior to the brown trout arrival in the 1880s.
Some tiger trout are produced intentionally in hatcheries to give anglers a unique hard-fighting fish to catch. Because of their voracious appetite, tigers are sometimes stocked into streams that have undesirable fish species. Out west, in some streams, brook trout are considered an invasive species competing with the native fish. Tiger trout are often used to help control some western brook trout populations.
A little about Cathy Valancius: She is a somewhat recent new member of the Coosa Valley TU chapter and has been quite active. In addition to becoming CVCTU treasurer, she is the ghillie for Georgia Women Fly Fishers (that’s the fishing day planner) and secretary of the Southeastern Council of Fly Fishers International. Cathy loves fly fishing and getting involved.
TROUT UNLIMITED MEETING
The Coosa Valley Chapter of TU will resume our monthly meetings on Thursday, Jan. 19. The meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. at the Rome Floyd ECO Center at Ridge Ferry Park in Rome. Nationally known outdoor writer Jimmy Jacobs will be our speaker.
Jimmy has written many books on fishing in the south and most of the books are about trout and fly fishing. He now has a brand new book, “Angler’s Guide to Georgia State Parks — Where to Fish and What You Can Catch,” and will have his books available for purchase and autograph at the meeting. The public is invited.
Dream Trip tickets are still available online at Go.TuLocalEvents.org/georgia-tu-dream-trip. Help fund the Georgia Trout Camp. Be sure to choose the Coosa Valley Chapter when making your purchase.