pcray1231 wrote:
I thought I was pretty good at identifying a wild trout until the survey was done at the LJ and it was determined that nearly all the brown trout surveyed were wild. I think we often assume things based on where we catch them rather than just evaluating strictly on the basis of the indicators.
Yeah, the LJR humbled me a bit too. But to be fair, fingerlings are much tougher. You lose the color indicators, like the red adipose and the blue spot, because fingerlings often have that too. And very often the fin wear indicator too, contrary to popular belief, fins heal. And its at a rate roughly equivalent to fish growth. So a fingerling stocked fish, once it goes through a growth spurt, is likely to have very clean fins.
Which means I was identifying them as stocked basically based on location and genetics. And the wild stock in the LJR do indeed have genetics very similar to PFBC fish, which is not true everywhere. So that just leaves location. What can I say, I bought the PFBC story of staying cold but lacking appropriate breeding sites. I figured there were a few wilds mixed in, but thought the bulk of the fishery was fingerlings. Turned out I had it backwards.