Seasonal changes in habitat use and preference by juvenile brown trout, Salmo trutta, in a northern boreal river

Abstract

By means of electrofishing, we examined seasonal and size-class variation in habitat preference by juvenile brown trout (Salmo trutta) in a third-order river in northern Finland. Larger trout preferred deeper stream areas than young-of-the-year fish. At the onset of winter, all trout size-classes moved into shallower water, but this mainly reflected seasonal variation in habitat availability. In winter, trout preferred slowly flowing stream areas, whereas in other seasons the mean water velocities used by trout parallelled habitat availability. In summer and autumn, age-0 fish favoured stream areas with large amounts of aquatic vegetation to provide cover. The largest trout (16-22 cm) occupied habitats with little cover throughout the year, and in winter, all trout avoided areas with high instream cover. In summer, all size-classes preferred small substrates, whereas in winter, areas with cobble-boulder substrates were preferred, especially by trout larger than 10 cm. Wintering trout often shelter among the interstitial spaces of coarse substrates, and to facilitate the survival of juvenile trout through winter, stream management programmes need to ensure that such particles are abundantly available in trout wintering areas.