a friend caught 3 of these up to strawberrry and we are just wondering what it is. looks like a rainbow after being abducted by aliens 
. at first thought it was a tiger trout but spots instead of stripes. anybody know?
Looks like a young rainbow, a.k.a. cutthroat slimer snacks.
I’ve never seen them with the big spots. do you know if that is unusual?
yep, It’s a baby rainbow.
**
Those are some of the new baby rainbows that are being planted in larger sizes…to help escape MOST of the cutthroats. **
Depends upon the strain of rainbow and which hatchery they came from as to whether or not they have pronounced “parr” markings.
I caught a big cutt last fall that burped one up just like that.
[inline slimersnack.jpg]
ok thanks for the info figured it was a rainbow but I’ve just never seen one that looked like that. [unimpressed]
Many members of the salmonid family have those marks while young. Probably some kind of camoflage coloring scheme. It seems to be different patterns and darker shadings in some species and on some waters. At any rate, those mostly disappear as the fish grow larger.
When I was just a kid growing up in eastern Nev. almost all the little trout we caught from the more remote streams were marked like that. We always referred to them as “natives” figuring that they were spawned there in that particular stream. Seems to me that the small cutts had the same kind of markings too. We kinda held the fish without the parr marks as somewhat inferior & called them “planters”. What’s this trivia worth? I dunno, just thought I’d share it.
thanks guys for the responses
kinda nice to have somewhere to ask strange questions and get some good info. 