Are there Brown Trout in the Yakima?

Technically yes!  However, the common sense answer is no!  According to WDFW biologists the Yakima river hosts a brown trout population that consists of .0001% of the total trout population.  What that means to you and me is a 1 in a 1000 chance of catching a brown trout in the Yakima river.  But the real question is how did they get there, and that question doesn't have any easy answers.  Over the years, private ponds and public lakes in the watershed that had brown trout in them have flooded and released fish into the river system.  In 2010 I caught this brown on the Yakima river below ringer.  The only brown I have ever seen from the Yakima river... 


UPDATE: fall of 2015 we landed this Brown Trout in the Upper Yakima. Due to extremely low water conditions, probably migrated down from the upper Cle Elum river watershed..mystery....

Crazy, right?