Fishing 2018

The local lakes will have rainbow and brown trout stocked this week, so I will be hitting them hard. Went yesterday to see if they were stocked a few days early, but nope....However I did get 50+ panfish !
 
Hit the lakes twice so far and caught and released over 20 rainbows and browns...Headed out today and Friday again!
 
tom19176 said:
Hit the lakes twice so far and caught and released over 20 rainbows and browns...Headed out today and Friday again!
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Released????? My wife grew up eating fish and rice in the Philippines...maybe I should give you my address so you can throw some on dry ice and send to us:D
 
I mostly do catch and release. I can keep three trout a day any size browns and or rainbow as they are stocked. They tend to taste a bit bland as they were feed pellets for food in the hatchery. If you get them after they are in the lake long enough, they taste better. I hit another lake yesterday and got three nice browns and nine rainbows....a few panfish too! All on wax worms....
 
I've never caught a brown, but sure know what you mean about stocked fish not tasting as good. The big one I posted on page 3 tasted so bad I wished I hadn't kept it, bad flavor and texture. Wish we had panfish here, miss bluegill and crappie fishing.
 
tom19176 said:
I mostly do catch and release. I can keep three trout a day any size browns and or rainbow as they are stocked. They tend to taste a bit bland as they were feed pellets for food in the hatchery. If you get them after they are in the lake long enough, they taste better. I hit another lake yesterday and got three nice browns and nine rainbows....a few panfish too! All on wax worms....
Click to expand...

Rose and Thistle Custom said:
I've never caught a brown, but sure know what you mean about stocked fish not tasting as good. The big one I posted on page 3 tasted so bad I wished I hadn't kept it, bad flavor and texture. Wish we had panfish here, miss bluegill and crappie fishing.
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By far the best tasting freshwater fish I have ever eaten were some Volcano Creek Golden Trout that we caught in the Sierra. They were pink-fleshed and tasted similar to wild caught salmon. And on a backpacking trip in Sequoia/Kings Canyon a couple years ago, some of the guys were catching rainbows in a lake at 10,600' but they didn't have oil for frying or any seasoning. But even seared in a dry skillet with no seasoning they were still delicious.

A lot of the high country lakes were stocked, but that hasn't happened in a number of years so any fish you catch in those lakes are multi-generation natives now. And the goldens were in a drainage where they were not native, but again those streams had been stocked a long time ago so the fish we caught were natives by that point.
 
Time is running out . I took off a day to fish and knocked the snot out of bass on a spinnerbait . No huge ones . This was the best one of the day . I hope to get out one or two more times before the weather shuts it down . Air temps started out in the low 30's then warmed into the 50's . Surface water temp was 54 in the morning , warmed a few degrees by the afternoon .

 
Golden trout, now that's the holy grail of fishing! Growing up I flyfished the high Cascade lakes in Oregon, we usually wrapped the ones we kept in foil with lemon and thyme and cooked in the campfire.
 
There was a stocked pond that my son and i went to fish when he was a kid. Some of the trout were golden. Not sure if they are the same type your all talking about?
 
http://fieldguide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=AFCHA0209A

The golden trout is a California species that was introduced in Montana in 1907. There are currently about 20 golden trout populations in the high mountain lakes of western and southcentral Montana. They provide a unique opportunity to catch a beautiful fish in a pristine environment. Golden trout up to 4 pounds have been caught in Montana but typical size is usually 6-12 inches. Golden trout are spring spawners and can usually be found in inlet or outlet streams to high mountain lakes around the Fourth of July. Like other mountain lake trout species, they are opportunistic feeders, surviving off a variety of aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates.
 
Thanks for the info on the golden trout.....I wonder if the ones they stocked were some sort of hybird? Went to the lake today and only had one hook up then threw the hook, so while I had a few great days I got skunked today!!!
 
The golden trout is probably a rainbow variation different from the ones Rose and Thistle is talking about. A trout hatchery in Petersburg WV Developed this strain in one of their rearing ponds. They were able to replicate them and stock quite a few today around here. They have the red/orange stripe of a rainbow trout.
 
WV has a week every spring when they stock only the gold ones. This coming year wiil be the second time. The rest of the spring they mix them with other rainbows, browns and brooks.
 
Here is a golden trout that came out of Guitar Lake on the west side of Mt Whitney:
OhyB7Rb.jpg


The colors on that one were already fading, it had been out of the water for a while before I got a picture. I read a fishing report a while back from some guys who fished the lakes in upper Miter Basin (just south of Mt Whitney, the lakes were all above 11,000') and they were catching quite a few goldens in the 3-5 lb range.

Rose and Thistle had the correct link for the golden trout to which I was referring. Here are a couple more:
http://westernnativetrout.org/california-golden-trout/
https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Inland/California-Golden-Trout

It is native to a small range in the southern sierra nevada, but has been widely planted in other parts of the sierra nevada and in other states, too.
 
Beautiful fish! The ones we caught at the stocked lake were totally yellow/gold like a golden carp....
 
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