Wild Trout Streams is a site that provides maps and geographical data (primarily KML files that you can download and use in Google Earth) showing wild trout streams throughout the east coast. This looks like a great resource.
I’ve been checking out the site for wild trout streams in Virginia, which has a lot of information including PDF and JPG format species maps, topo maps and data sets for a ton of places in the state. Shenandoah National Park is covered here, as well as stream flows and other data for the entire state.
This is definitely a good starting point if you’re keen on exploring streams off the beaten path. The main map on the Virginia page (shown in this post) shows bright green lines for known brook trout populations, courtesy of data from the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, which you can also see using the EBTJV interactive map or on the Geospatial Data Search and Access page of the EBTJV website.
In addition to the green lines for brook trout streams, the map shows brownish lines for brown trout and pink lines for rainbows. There are separate KML files for brook, brown and rainbow trout streams in Virginia. Just looking at the map (click on it to see it larger) it is obvious that brook trout populations are concentrated on the Blue Ridge around Skyline Drive and The Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as on the western side of the Shenandoah Valley, along Great North Mountain and eastern West Virginia.
I see places I’ve always suspected brookies may inhabit and that seems to now merit some trips! Hopefully this data is recent and good enough to still be reasonably accurate. Brook trout fishing is right around the corner and I am going to track down a couple of these spots in addition to hitting the places I already know and love. I can’t wait.