Wild or Stocked? How can I tell?

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PATroutMan

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This may be a dumb question which is why I am putting it in the beginner forum, anyway, I see people posting about catching trout and always seem to specify if the trout is wild or stocked. My question is how can someone really tell if the trout is wild or stocked? I know for the most part that wild trout fight harder, but is this the only way to tell? Or are most people just taking a guess?
 
It's almost always an educated or informed guess. Fish color, fin quality, location of catch, size, etc. all play into the guess. How hard the fish fights? Not so much..
 
Yeah, depends on what species. Rainbows are the toughest for me to tell, though that's from lack of experience somewhat.

Browns are the easiest. Perfect translucent fins, blue/black spot behind the eye, red coloration in the adipose fin are all good indicators. None of them 100%, but if you got that trifecta going for it, you are 99% sure. If none of the above, you are 99% sure it's stocked. Then there are tweeners that may have some, but not all. Those are tougher, and quite often you find out they're fingerling stocked or something like that.

As for brookies. The easiest way to tell is size and shape. Stocked brookies are thick and 9-12" long, the product of a fast growth rate. That's extremely rare for a wild brookie, where 4-8" is the norm, and the bigger ones are typically skinny and big headed. But this is really based on growth rate, not origin, so a wild fish in a lake or a limestoner, i.e. richer food environment, may grow quickly and fool ya. Another good indicator is the white and black markings on the caudal and anal fins. In wild fish, the white and black are completely separated and typically by a perfect or almost perfect straight line. In stocked fish, the delineation may be "muddy", or at least the dividing line isn't so perfectly straight.

Of course, location and what's expected to be there comes into it. Of fish that could go either way, the most probable situation for the water in question usually gets the benefit of the doubt.

All physical markers are probabilistic, meaning if you know what to look for, you can be right most of the time, but nobody can say they have never, ever gotten one wrong. There's no 100% marker short of putting scales under a microscope, or doing DNA testing.
 
PATroutMan wrote:
My question is how can someone really tell if the trout is wild or stocked?

Good answers ^

Because this topic is near and dear to the hearts of many of our readers (who prefer wild trout) the issue is a recurrent one. So much so, that there is a lot of humorous and tongue-in-cheek posting and comments about it. You'll also hear the term "gemmie" used a lot. This is PAFF forum slang for wild brook trout and is often used in a humorous tone.
 
These aren't the best pictures but here are some wild browns and brooks to compare with the descriptions pcray gave. Personally I didn't know the distinctions but they made sense after I looked at my pictures from a recent trip to a class A stream.

Wild Brown
IMG_20160610_081037972_zpsmfmyjmtv.jpg


Wild Brook
IMG_20160610_074702437_zpspukymyl4.jpg

 
I feel like pictures of stockers might help too. You will see alot of what pcray is talking about. First two are stockers, second two are wild. I say that but nothing is 100%. It takes some time to see the details but once you know what to look for you get a pretty good idea.

Picture010.jpg


DSCN0709_zpsksu0aag5.jpg


20130602_135459_zpsa5930db4.jpg
20150725_092942-1_zps9z4obq86.jpg
 
Wild browns tend to have rounder spots where as the stocked browns can be more irregular and blocky. Wild brown red spots are more true to red while stocked browns have orange and rust colors. This is not always the case but a good indication. Ryan's pictures above indicate this well, although his pic of a stocked brown is more wild looking than most stockers I see.
 
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