North America has had a four-hundred-year love affair with the brook trout - Salvelinus fontinalis - its great native trout. And now Nick Karas offers the first major profile of this most beautiful of gamefish. Brook Trout is a thorough look at the history, biology, and angling possibilities of the fish most fishermen affectionately call the brookie. Through the eyes of a trained ichthyologist, Karas explores the brook trout"s biology and the events that led to its evolution and distribution. He unravels the controversies surrounding the two largest brook trout ever taken. But the core of this book is the fishery: its past status, current condition, and future. And because the history of brook-trout fishing is inseparable from the history of American fishing, Karas follows the development of the rods, reels, lines, lures, and flies that evolved as anglers continued their fascination with this great gamefish.