Snorkeling With Brook Trout in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another underwater adventure. Just got off work, got the car all packed up, and we're headed to Smoky Mountains National Park. It's 245 a.m. Finally made it to Andrew's house. I'm gonna go inside and get to sleep as quickly as possible because we got an early start tomorrow. Good morning. We've got a two-mile hike to get to our snorkel spot today. So I'm gonna be carrying a decent bit of gear, trying to get as packed up as I can now so that when we get there we can just hop out of the car and head up the mountain. If you're wondering why we're carrying all this gear way up into the Smokies, it's because we were after a very specific brook trout. It's a southern Appalachian brook trout. So there's a couple different strains of brook trout. There's northern Appalachian brook trout and southern Appalachian brook trout. The ones we're after are the southern. The southern can tend to be a little bit smaller, but they're more colorful. They're also a little more sensitive to water quality. They pretty much just live in high-elevation headwaters. So they require cold, glass-flowing water that's under a pretty dense canopy so that the water stays cool even in the summer. They really require pretty pristine aquatic environments to survive. The northern strain of the brook trout, of the Appalachian brook trout, is a little bit more hardy and a little bit bigger, but they're a little less colorful. So it's a good, you know, sport fish for fly fishermen. I mean, both are, but those ones tend to get stocked more frequently. We're after the southern Appalachian brookies, so we're having to work to get to them. Yeah, that's what we're going for right there. Ew, there's some bear poop. This is why they call it fall. I'm from Florida. I don't get to experience this. These fish do not make it easy. This is what we're looking for. Tiny brook trout right there. If you remember from my hellbender video, I ripped my wetsuit after two good years, but Mako is very kind and sent me a 7mm wetsuit that they had. They're about to change out to blue color, but they had this one left, and they said to me that waters are super cold. Probably upper 40s. It's going to help keep you toasty. So thank you, Mako. However, 7mm is extra hard to get on, so we'll see how this goes. I look kind of funny, but I am getting my socks wet on purpose. You know it's fall when they whip these bad boys out. Alrighty, let's go snorkel with some Smoky Mountain brook trout. I got in beside the little cascade, and the water was so cold it stung my face. I'm guessing it was about 48 degrees Fahrenheit. There were flashes of orange and red amidst the storm of air bubbles as fallen leaves were continually rushed downstream. All those leaves got to go somewhere, right? As I turned the deeper section of the pool, I saw a spectacular underwater leaf pile. Now these headwater streams are critical freshwater habitat, but they aren't actually home to a large number of creatures. The stack of leaves did, however, provide some cover for this tiny little black-nosed dace. I made my way over to where I'd seen the brook trout from above the surface. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to be in the area. But then, the male trout materialized in front of me. He didn't stick around for long at all, and almost as sudden as he appeared, he blasted off to some unknown part of the stream. As small as the stream was, the trout were clearly very good at hiding when they wanted to. Didn't seem like I was gonna have much luck here, so I wiped the air bubbles off my dome port and packed up my gear. After a little bit of searching, I spotted Andrew in his dry suit, tucked up under some rhododendron. So I threw my stuff down, grabbed the camera, ducked under the bushes, and got back to snorkeling. It was still cold. It wasn't getting any easier. Once again, I was greeted with an incredible display of Smoky Mountain underwater fall. But one flash of red stood out from the fall foliage. Sure enough, brook trout swam out from between the rocks. Brook trout are a type of char, making them a member of the salmon family. The southern strain of Appalachian brook trout range from the tip of Georgia up to Virginia. But the healthy headwater habitat they require is exceedingly rare, as much of it was logged and destroyed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Logging causes erosion, which silts off streams, and also removes the canopy, which is required to help these waters stay cool and well-oxygenated year-round. As you can see, these little trout are quite speedy, and I was having a heck of a time trying to get close to one. It was also very dark and shady in this part of the stream. Finally, I managed to get a quick shot of the sky and brighten things up with my dive lights. What a stunning little fish. As I made my way into another pool, I found yet another pile of leaves. Even the fish get to experience fall colors. This is perhaps not the most standard way to view autumn leaf season in the Smokies, but it is pretty sweet. I scanned the leaves for signs of life until I finally spotted this particularly well-camouflaged little fish. This is a brook trout par, or fingerling. Fingerling trout are usually less than a year old, and a good giveaway is that distinct fingerprint pattern, or par marks, running down their side. As they grow into adults, that pattern will mostly fade, though it'll still be there a little bit. There were quite a few young trout in this area of the stream, and it's always good to see another generation of native fish on the ups. However, my quest was to get up close with full-blown adult brookies and hopefully capture footage of some behavior. So once again, it was time to try my luck in a different part of the stream. So as you can see, it's not a lot of like straight snorkeling because the river is so shallow. There's so many pockets, so we're really just kind of bouncing in between pools, which is actually pretty exhausting because you've got to carry this thing. Oh my gosh, you've got to carry this thing. In between the pools, I just get up and down a lot and also try to fall under beauty. Pretty amazing ecosystem. I slipped in by another tiny waterfall, the water rushing past me as it surged downhill. It was a chaotic little aquatic world and surprisingly loud. The speed of the water made it challenging to navigate, but that's also what gives life to this ecosystem. As the water spills over the boulders and rocks, it creates diversity within the stream. This includes the formation of silt-free gravel beds, which are essential for brook trout spawning. As I rounded the waterfall, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the beginnings of courtship between a male trout and a young female. However, they kind of slowly drifted off to the side of the gravel bed near some roots. When it comes to fish, when they're spawning, they get laser focused and block most things out from their little brains. Seemed like these two didn't have their heart quite in it yet. This other brook trout and I creeped on the potential fish couple from behind the roots, but nothing really happened. It was a pretty scene though. I spent a little more time searching the nearby area, and while I saw another colorful male and some more young trout, I wasn't getting what I was hoping for. I was also getting quite cold, so it was time to get out, fuel up, and do some exploring for snorkel areas that promised some more brook trout action. Protein bar. Left my underwater camera back there right now. I'm just trying to scout out good pools. I'm seeing plenty of brook trout, but not any in scenarios where it looks like I could get close to them. I'm hoping to find a couple that were spawning, but so far no luck. Check this out. Some people might think of snorkeling as a leisurely activity. Well, this was anything but. It was constant up and down and every trout I saw acted like they'd seen an electric blue ghost, which is totally valid. Before long, I was exhausted and honestly kind of doubting if I was going to see much action today. My feet hurt so bad. So many rocks. And I have pretty tough feet. But then, I found Andrew posted up like it was his first time snorkeling, and I was like, this. He was just straight chillin, headwater horizontal style, and I knew things were about to get good. Andrew finished taking photos and then kindly invited me over to where he had been positioned. I got in across the pool carefully and then slowly made my way over to the far bank. I then proceeded to lay just like this for an hour, and this is where it all happened. On a small gravel bed at the edge of the stream was a lone female trout. Remember how I said spawning fish or laser focused? Well, she was fully locked in. She was absolutely glued to this patch of gravel. I'm gonna stop talking and we're just gonna watch her for a bit. She wasn't by herself for too long, however, as a large male brookie suddenly swam into the frame. This female didn't seem to mind at all. Eventually, the female turned on her side and violently swung her tail fin up and down, sending a spray of tiny rocks and sand behind her. She's digging what's called a red. Now, a red is basically a small depression or nest where female trout will deposit their eggs when they spawn. They prefer to dig their reds in beds of gravel, just like this, and she's working hard to get it just to her liking. All this time, the male trout hadn't really helped at all with the digging, but what he can offer are headbutts. The male trout would swim alongside the female and then bump into her in an attempt to initiate spawning. He did this over and over again, but the female was still building up to it. But this action had caught the attention of another fish in the area, a rival male. The first male was now on high alert, giving up headbutts for full-on defense. He chased the intruding male all over the place. I was honestly impressed with his eyesight, as he would spot the newcomer way in the distance and then zoom after him. The rival was persistent, and these chases went on for quite some time. The pursuit was so intense, they even ran into me once. The female kept her distance for most of the conflict, but when she did show up, it turned into a fish tornado, and she only narrowly avoided the crossfire. As they swam off again, the defending male took a huge snap at the intruder. I mean, look at those jaws. It may be just an 8-inch fish, but that's terrifying. They continued zooming around like race cars as the males juggled the urge to fight and reproduce. Finally, the original male proved his dominance, and with a final chase, he secured the spawning site. The male was solo now, as all that action scared off the female for the time being. He would still periodically go on patrol. His rival males were still lurking in the shadows nearby, waiting for him to slip up. But he had no plans to. All that action takes up a lot of energy, so the male actually became pretty focused on feeding. It would go up to the surface and gulp down tiny invertebrates that I couldn't even see laying there behind my camera. It was pretty special getting to see this characteristic feeding behavior from beneath the surface. At long last, the female returned. I didn't end up seeing the actual spawning event, but hopefully these fish will make plenty more little brook trout to live on in this headwater ecosystem. I'm just thankful these guys let me watch it all unfold. Such a stunning species in a stunning place. So I was laying there just like this, and I had my tongue on the focus and trigger here, and one of the males was so scared of the dominant male he swam in between my finger and my housing right by me, just trying to get out of there as fast as he could. So that's pretty crazy. A good way to end the day. I definitely would not have survived without seven millimeters. That water is ice cold, but it's good for brook trout. Well I carried these up here for nothing. My old one is crap. See you later brook trout. We're walking back and Andrew's multitasking and looking at his photos on his monitor. I'm jealous because I can't do it. Yeah, I mean I'd stub my toe so hard in these things. The flashy colors and busyness of the surface world often make us forget about life beneath the surface. The water and land are inherently tied together, and the way in which we live above the surface still affects these sensitive aquatic environments. I'm glad that these brook trout are protected within Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but not all native fish and not all freshwater systems have it that good. There's a whole lot of underwater beauty out there worth protecting. All right, it's dark now. Finally made it back. Hungry, cold, hot, tired, sore, but happy because we saw some cool little fish. As always, thank you guys for watching, and I will see you next time.