TUnamas wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 12:10 pm
Estaz stone! Nice fly (and fall color.) Great fish!
Fishfarmer, given your background can I ask a question?: This fish has a big head suggesting maturity, but why aren't we seeing lake run trout that are longer and heavier? Too few to sample? Not enough forage? Or are these fish spending more time in the rivers than we understand?
I can only speculate on some of that.
We take eggs/brood line from 3 year old captive fish. At that time roughly 50% of the fish have identified as males and are ripe. Some males do spawn at 2 years, but I don't have a percent of how many do. The females are interesting, the remaining 50% are female BUT about 10% to 15% are NON spawning at age 3. They are sorted out in December and are shiny like a lake fish. Sometimes we keep a few to see if they mature at 4 yrs, some do, some don't. This happens with the Chamber's Creek and the Memphremagog rainbows. We generally don't spawn the broodfish past 4 years, but know that fish will produce eggs up to 5 years, but that is from proven 3 year old fish.
So my thoughts are the runs consist of 3 year old fish, could be in the river in November to May, not feeding. If they drop back in the spring and run to spawn a second year, there's 5 to 6 months from May to winter to get their weight back on and produce eggs again. I question how much they can really grow in that time.
My theory about the big shiny steelhead that are occasionally caught in the lake, are the non spawning/later spawners, maybe they never run and just swim and eat. I'm not sure how old these fish will eventually get. I think I rarely hear of monster steelhead coming up the Salmon River in Pulaski, a few 15 to 20 lb. fish, but the bulk size I remember were 8lb to 12lb fish which were likely first year spawners.
