Soquel Creek brookies

drifting the Russian River last year and waiting to trailer up boats talked with a man and his son from Santa Cruz. I told him how I used to catch brook trout on a family-owned piece of property on Soquel Creek as a kid in the late sixties. he said his father used to tell him stories about that but they're all gone by the time he was old enough to fish. started poking around on the net as I know brook trout are not native there.
 turns out Department of Fish and Game experimented with many of the rivers flowing into Monterey Bay. might that be the reason there's nothing to catch down there anymore :

A couple of steelhead were caught and released off of the capitola  pier about a month ago. 

Not doubting you, but Ive never heard the brook trout in Soquel story before. Being a char, Ive always though of them as needing colder water than Soquel can provide. They are certainly beautiful, scrappy, and all around badass though.

I too have wondered why there is not more trout in all of our monterey and Santa Cruz county coastal streams.  Ive just assumed Fish and Game  refrain from stocking them so as not to introduce competition, disease, and crossbreedig with wild steelhead. Hopefully Matt aka Steelhead can expand will this. He knows more.

In some of the upper stretches of local watersheds, the rainbows have bright & distinct color patterns...even white tip fins etc. And have heard people refer to them as brook trout. But I'm pretty sure there are no brookies around here. Brown trout, yes! The dfg experimented with planting browns for decades before the south cen coast steelhead became federally protected in 1997.

have been feverishly searching for where I found it on the internet and can't seem to find it. if memory serves me correctly unbelieving 9 streams Creeks and rivers were experimented with ending around 1950 or so. maybe my search is too broad this time ?

I have a map from a retired fishing buddy which shows where brook trout were planted and steelhead were landlocked in Marin and Sonoma counties including an old hunt club on Point Reyes.  I have scouted a couple of them, but not much is left.

Back in the seventies they put a couple plants of brookies in Lake Lagunitus Marin Co. I remember catching them for a couple years after that.

Way back when, CDFG (and California Fisheries Commission before them) did all sorts of wacky stuff like planting random trout species in various places across the state.  They didn't usually take the species' habitat requirements or its potential effects on native species into account.  Surprisingly, this veritable free-for-all continued for several decades.  One of the crazier records I recall was the stocking of lake trout (mackinaw) in the Sacramento River near Sacramento  .

There could be all sorts of reasons why your Soquel Creek brookies petered out and failed to establish a self-sustaining population.  I don't know anything about Soquel Creek, but just given its geography and elevation, I'd hazard a guess that a couple years worth of drought could easily kill off a population.  Brookies are fall spawners, and rarely ever live beyond 4 or 5 years of age, so it'd only take a few bad drought years to essentially wipe out a population.  Rainbow trout are successful in those watersheds because they have highly variable life histories, such as the ability to turn into steelhead.  When stream conditions were turning to crap, rainbows could outmigrate to the refuge of the ocean and return as adult steelhead in the winter.  Although there are sea-run brook trout on the east coast, I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed on the west coast.

Speaking of brookies...   They are badass fish!

Way back when, CDFG (and California Fisheries Commission before them) did all sorts of wacky stuff like planting random trout species in various places across the state.  They didn't usually take the species' habitat requirements or its potential effects on native species into account.  Surprisingly, this veritable free-for-all continued for several decades.  One of the crazier records I recall was the stocking of lake trout (mackinaw) in the Sacramento River near Sacramento  .

There could be all sorts of reasons why your Soquel Creek brookies petered out and failed to establish a self-sustaining population.  I don't know anything about Soquel Creek, but just given its geography and elevation, I'd hazard a guess that a couple years worth of drought could easily kill off a population.  Brookies are fall spawners, and rarely ever live beyond 4 or 5 years of age, so it'd only take a few bad drought years to essentially wipe out a population.  Rainbow trout are successful in those watersheds because they have highly variable life histories, such as the ability to turn into steelhead.  When stream conditions were turning to crap, rainbows could outmigrate to the refuge of the ocean and return as adult steelhead in the winter.  Although there are sea-run brook trout on the east coast, I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed on the west coast.

My favorite were the grayling in Lobdell lake. Said they were killed when the damn broke. Random rumors some survived in a stretch of creek though.

In the 60's I used to catch Goldens up Eureka Canyon creek above the reservoir. Browns Valley creek seemed to provide more browns and brookies. I was around 12 to 14 years old then.

I Zod Out

      I've been working on a home up near the gravel quarry.   The owners just worked out a deal with the Salmon / Steelhead project to enhance  a large section of the creek  running through his property.  That work was just finished this past fall.