beautiful fish

[Uintaman]

wow, those are preeety.
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[Uintaman]

I was under the impression that it was Fish Lake, and that being said, they have stocked brookies in there. If not Fish lake ignore this.
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[PBH]

not Fish Lake. It's Blind Lake.
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[TT600]

Do they taste any good when colored like that? Any brightly colored trout I have caught has not tasted good, brooks, browns, cutts, bows, tigers, etc. The more silver the better....except lake trout. I caught some post-spawn brookies yesterday, very good. The brightly colored spawners a few weeks ago, not so good.
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[wormandbobber]

Coloration in trout is not always a result of spawning....a lot of times coloration is due to diet. The fish from Blind Lake are very colorful outside of the spawn and splake may have that same kind of coloration in the early spring or summer months.

I would say that the brook trout you ate that didn't taste good was a result of the fish being caught during the spawn and had nothing to do with coloration. Taste, though, is really relative or subjective. Personally, I don't think spawning brook trout taste bad either...
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[albinotrout]

[quote PBH]not Fish Lake. It's Blind Lake.[/quote]

Blind lake a purdy place. Caught my one and only splake ever out of that lake.
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[PBH]

[quote TT600]Do they taste any good when colored like that? [/quote]

Yes!!

As wormandbobber mentioned, the coloration is due to diet, not spawning activity.

Boulder Mountain lakes are famous for the abundance of amphipods (ie: freshwater shrimp). Fish have a lot in common with flamingos. Why do flamingos turn pink? Because they eat a lot of crustaceans loaded with ceroten. That's what turns them pink. Amphipods are also loaded with ceroten, which causes the fish that eat them to have very brilliant colors, and also causes their flesh to turn vibrant orange as well.

More pics. #1 is a splake from Blind in June. Again, it is very vibrantly colored:


pic #2 is a splake from Joe's Valley, which has no amphipods. It is a very bland (but big!) splake:




I would take my chances eating that very colorful splake over the bland colored splake any day!
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[Irish_Miner]

Nice fish. Splake are cool and great tasting!