Today I was fishing a small creek in Eastern Pennsylvania and landed a gorgeous rainbow trout. However, something caught my eye. I recognized an orange streak under the throat of this rainbow identical to cutthroats I caught in Wyoming a few years back. Obviously cutbows exist, but what am I seeing here?! The second and third photos show opposite sides of the fish, and the spot was obviously not blood.
Posted by Pleasant-Item-757
3 Comments
Cutbow
interesting! I’ve always wondered and asked many times if rainbows can still have some gill slash with no cutthroat in their genetics… because I’ve caught some with slash in areas where I would be really surprised if there had been any intermingling, but I live in Colorado so there’s always a chance a cutthroat managed to get somewhere unexpected, or mistakes were made in the hatchery… and I’ve seen it in Michigan too, but they stock steelhead that were originally from the west coast and intermi gle with cutthroats, so there could have been mixups with getting pure steelhead eggs or parr. I don’t think this is 100% conclusive that rainbows can get gill slash without cutthroat genetics… there could be hatchery/historical stocking mistakes that let some cutthroat genetics creep in… but man, Pennsylvania is definitely not going to have wild cutbows appearing unless someone did illegal stocking… which is also a possibility.
I wonder what the sources Pennsylvania has had for its rainbows in the past. For example, have they ever brought in fish from the west to diversify the genetic pool?
I’m in NW NJ and I’ve caught plenty of stocked rainbows that have orange slashes on their throats. Not sure how it happens but last spring I caught a handful with similar markings.