Cuttbows

Was extremely surprised to catch a few of these today and didnt believe at first but close examination showed they were. At first look they appear to be rainbows but a few had obvious orange slash marks on the jaw and one even had orange on the belly. The pure rainbows caught didnt have clipped fins either so i dont know whats goin on this little stream but it was pretty cool. They were feisty fish and even saw some pushing 20+ inches!! The 5th picture down was the cuttbow i took a picture of and my brother caught two more.

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Heres the cuttbow, wish i took pictures of the gill slits
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Really cool dark coloration on this one…
[inline IMG_0326.JPG]]…and this was one wierd lookin fat little TOAD!!

That last one looks like it might have whirling disease!

They don’t look like “cutbows” to me.

Remember, pure rainbow trout can have slash marks under their jaws. This is not a sign of any kind of hybridization – just something some rainbow trout develop. Rainbows and Cutthroat are very closely related, and do share some characteristics.

The thing you need to find out is: are there cutthroat in this stream, and are both rainbows and cutthroat reproducing or not?

pretty fish, regardless.

They didnt look like cuttbows to me either thats why i thought it was so weird. I did however find pictures online of cuttbows that looked pretty much identical. There are cutthroat in the stream and the rainbows like i said did not look like planters so its a mystery to me. But i have caught a lot of rainbows wild and stocked and have never seen slash marks like these or orange coloring on the belly.

That last one looks like it might have whirling disease!

Nope. The tail isn’t black. Here’s a YouTube video of a trout that has whirling disease.

The trout pictured in this thread had some type of spinal injury or deformity, but most likely not whirling disease.