Ever heard of an "Appalachian wood trout"?

[ALarge]

No, it's not the opening line to a corny joke my weird uncle Bob told me.  

I was in the Southern Appalachians of Northeast Tennessee for work earlier this week and was able to escape into some beautiful mountain streams to fish for what I presumed would be brookies by the looks of the stream I was fishing, Rocky Fork. Well, I ended up pulling out a whole slew of tiny wild rainbow trout and not a single brookie the whole day. Anyways, I wanted to check more into the history and fauna of the area I had been in and looked up a couple articles highlighting the beauty of the state park in which I had been fishing. Three separate articles list "Appalachian wood trout" as one of the species found in Rocky Fork in Flag Pond, TN -which is a species I had never heard of. I googled for a little while longer and couldn't find any more references to "Appalachian wood trout" aside from the three articles that referenced Rocky Fork State Park in Tennessee. 

Have any of you trout bums ever heard of such a thing as an "Appalachian wood trout"? I emailed the authors of the article to see if they could remember where they got that intel, but haven't heard back yet. 

here's the results for my google search

I'm curious if any of you trout bums have ever heard of such a species, or perhaps anyone use "wood trout" as a lang for some other species? 

Alex

[Evan D]

My guess is someone started calling brook trout "Appalachian wood trout" and it stuck in a very small area of Tennessee.  In the second article on your google search they don't mentioned brook trout at all - just 'wood trout' and rainbows.  Seems like a case of local slang to me.  Google "#mrpajamapants" and I think you'll agree that slang terms for fish certainly exist in local populations. ;)