Rainbow lands in Falls

When John Beasley isn't tending to his parking-lot painting business, the Raleigh resident spends a lot of time at Falls Lake catching crappie or at the coast chasing speckled trout.

A couple of weeks ago, Beasley caught a trout, only he wasn't at the coast. And it wasn't a speck. It was a rainbow trout at Falls Lake. This may not be as rare as, say, a Bigfoot or Elvis sighting, but this one is confirmed.

"I fish as often as I can," Beasley, 63, a BellSouth retiree, said by telephone from his home. "On March 31, I stopped at One Stop Sports Shop to buy minnows and launched at Ledge Rock [boating access area] and headed to the Rolling View Recreation area near Lick Creek."

Beasley was fishing a minnow under a cork using a limber B'n'M crappie rod in his 15-foot Polar Craft skiff. A half-hour had gone by with no fish when Beasley decided to adjust.

"I picked up the rod to move the minnow to another spot, and a fish flashed at it," he said. "So, I dropped it back."

The fish struck again, and Beasley played it to the boat.

"My first thought was, 'That thing's got spots like a speckled trout,' " he said.

And he was right, sort of.

Beasley picked up, headed over to a bass boat and asked the anglers to identify the fish.

"One thought it was a rainbow trout," Beasley said of the 2-pound, 1-ounce, 17 1/2-inch fish.

So what's it doing in Falls Lake?

"My guess would be a boat show or from a stream out west," said Kirk Rundle, District 3 fisheries biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

He was referring to the fish being a release from a "trout pond" promoters have at boat shows.

"Basically, it's not going to hang on when the water temperatures get past 70 degrees," Rundle said.

Because Falls is not part of the mountain trout stream system, Beasley did not need a trout license, Rundle said. Whoever put the rainbow in Falls violated the law, though, because a permit is required for stocking fish in public waters.

Beasley talked to Kent Nelson, another commission biologist.

"Kent said it was the second rainbow he'd heard of from the area," Beasley said. "The first was in the Eno [River] a couple of years ago." An angler since he was "5 or 6," Beasley said this was his first rainbow and probably his last. He thought about releasing the fish.

"I was about to put him back, but he looked like he was going to die," Beasley said, "and I didn't have a camera."

But the fish will be remembered long after it was caught.

"We dressed it," Beasley said, "and we're getting ready to eat it."

Just like a speckled trout. Just like a crappie.