Odds of a Wild Tiger Trout reaching 6”

[KenU]

Frank, I checked my dates and they are accurate. So I think we are talking about two different fish, certainly not impossible. I round my numbers to the nearest 0.25 inch except for those between 6.5 and 7.0 inches. Unless they are 7 inches they get rounded down to 6.5 inches. In this way I can calculate the potential kill if I kept all legal-sized trout and stayed within the daily creel limit. I don't keep track of the numbers of tiger trout I have caught, but it's less than a dozen.

 

[TheBluegillMaster]

Down here in MD a surprising number of tigers show up in baltimore county and I know of one that was found in Harford county a few years ago. They've been turning up in streams where brook trout are on the verge of extirpation but where browns do just fine. I think it's because the brook trout numbers in some of these small streams are so low that some years they do not find another brook trout to mate with. I know of at least 6 that have been found by electrofishing since 2018. In these scenarios I see the tigers showing up as a precursor to the brookies disappearing from that stream.

I've caught one in MD, but in a Frederick county stream with lots of small brook trout and where I've never caught a brown before, which fits the description of what other posters said about tigers showing up in predominantly bro

In Fred? that's real concerning. One thing I'd like to add to this topic is Positive Heterosis. Some hybrids exhibit something called hybrid vigor, where they could be bigger and stronger than their parents and exhibit behaviors from both parents (Ex. Tiger Musky) Now, my concern is that tigers pick up traits from both browns and brooks in that they can survive warmer, lower gradient streams like brownies and also live in smaller, high gradient streams like brookies. This also kind of answers the question of 6+ inch wild tigers. With all this, I think that its safe to say that they definitely exist and its just a matter of time before one pops up. Thank god they can't reproduce...
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis Explanation)