While it's too bad this came in a commercial fishery it does show there must be some pretty nice fish around the OP. Check this one out:


http://www.lettypotter.com/fishrepr.html

Looks bigger than 28

that looks an awful like an adipose fin back there?
tattered dorsal though

Nets have a way of doing that

Here we go again

I suspect most of these Dec/Jan big brutes are "hatchery" fish, that spawned out of their brood stock program. That's what I've been told, any ways.

The times I've fished that river, you really don't see a big push of nates until Feb on.

Yeah, that big daddy was pulled out the gene pool, but I can almost guarantee that many like it have already been caught and used in their brood stock program.

Now, I really cringe when I see a fish like that come out in March....kinda like what I did in 1996. D'oh!

PS - A first for me on the Q was this December when a good 75% of all the fish caught were clipped. I used to rarely see a clipped Q fish...ever! Glad to see some clipping is going on, on the Dec fishery.

Oh, and as for Toads, I'll take a photo of the mount Robbin has in his house. It was given to him by the brood stock/hatchery folks after they were done with it. It's a 30+ pound chromer MONSTER! If you ever need to get excited about the Big Q, just stop by his house and gaze at this fish. Ugh. I'd probably just freak out if I hooked that thing!

thats a hog, and what i like to call a chrome dome slab

Sure wish we had a different angle to view the adipose. Doesn't look clipped to me.

Downriggin'

The Qs don't clip all of their hatchery fish. You could tell by reading the scale if it was a hatchery or wild fish. But hatchery fish are certainly capable of becoming large - the state record from the Snake was a hatchery fish first generation, though, since then the size and viability of that run has dramatically declined

Can someone explain to me why that is a Steelhead? That is the first steelhead I saw that is uglier than a Chum Salmon. That damn fish is ugly. Every steelhead I have seen (and I have never caught one myself) but are beautiful fish with pink in them. Look at Bobs avatar. Can I have some characteristics please that make this a steelhead? I fish for them but don't catch them!

thats what they look like after they sit in the bottom of the boat for 10 hours before being cleaned and shipped to market.

MMMM good!

Parker, thanks for that info about the brood stock possibility, but the idea that this fish was netted is still kind of sickening.

This pic makes we want to puke...well not really, but it does suck that it wasn't allowed to reproduce "again".

Ya, Floatuber, that is not a real "pretty" example of a steelhead. Bob's avatar is a better example.

But neither of the mentioned ones are as large as the handsome buck amongst the ads up top ... that fish was 43 inches long and 23 inches in girth. Our big fish last year, we're looking for another one anytime now, it's that time of year!

Depending on the formulas used (there are several out there), the estimated weights ranged from 29.3 to 30.1 pounds ... we called him 29.5 based on that

They never look as big as when they almost span two persons widths vs. just one

Best part about it?? He swam off and we're about 95% certain we was caught again the next day by another lucky angler! And Grover still had a coffee table reproduction mount done as well!

A closer look for you ... that's the way they are supposed to look



Best way to tell the diff? Steelhead are far too great a fish to be as slimy as a salmon

Actually, go to the UW school of fisheries site and you should get a good lesson in taxonomy !

See BOB that is a BEAUTIFUL fish. Anyone with skill put a side by side of the two downsized.