Caught this trout today in a river that has both long term hold overs, stockers, and some wilds. Ive caught a ton of trout there and a ton today, but this one stood out from every trout ive caught there and fought twice as hard as fish that were almost twice its size (last pic is of a typical larger trout caught there) the river isbs rock/gravel bottom.
Posted by Hairy_Ferret9324
2 Comments
The only way i know to tell the difference is the tail on grown stocked fish is often trimmed.
Its fins are perfect, maybe the dorsal is slightly rubbed down but I can’t fully tell. Usually if I catch a super nice looking stocker, I’ll check the tail. The tail will usually have at least a small bit of rubbing on the top and/or bottom. You can tell that on the last picture. But the first fish has an extremely nice tail.
The colors are also rich, and they aren’t as bland as the last fish.
All in all, there’s no perfect way to tell, but I’d most likely say it’s a wild. Even holdovers don’t grow the fins back (absolutely) fully when they survive long in the wild in my experience.