Beautiful creatures............

Each one is unique in its own special way.

Great looking cutts Steeldrifter.
SF

I love this thread. Night fishing yellow bellies is one of my favorite things in the world. I've caught only 1 over 20". I've lost a couple that were bigger, and saw one once on the upper satsop while snorkeling that nearly made me mess my shorts. It keeps me going back summer after summer. The next one I get I'm going to have mounted, they are so beautiful and much cheaper to do than a steelhead. A friend of mine has a 24" 3-4 pound yellow belly mounted he got a few years ago in my local haunts. They're there still, just much harder to come by. I wish I was born 50 years ago when 25" we're common in the " still waters".

I'd be curious to talk to any local taxidermist who has 25+ years in locally to see what they have encountered -especially any old timer taxidermist back 40+ years.

Anything in the 23-24" range is such a rarity from what I have gathered.

I was born just over 50 years ago and as a kid larger fish than 20" were not very common so no one missed out on too much-perhaps 75 years ago they did. Maybe some lacustrine populations got thinned out early and became extinct in some of the rivers-who knows.

Smalma probably put it best, that habitat that produced those fish became Largemouth Bass water or was degraded to where the fishery is now limited. I remember way more beaverponds too as a kid. Trapping took care of far too many beavers too.

The neatest colored fish I caught were from sloughs that were murky and slow and barely anything much than a slow canal. The big fish were most likely sea-runs that were feeding and getting ready to spawn I suppose-not sure. There was no gravel so perhaps they were just on feeding runs killing time. There were alot of juvenile peamouth and sucker-types of fish by the thousands stuck in those canals.

I have read of Bull Trout in Grays Harbor streams that were once somewhat plentiful that were there only to feed and not spawn-an interesting fish I'd love to more about historically. I have fished Grays Harbor streams for 30+ years and never once caught a Dolly/Bull in those waters.

When I was 14 years old was when I got the biggest cutt of my life. Fishing off the beach at my uncles house on the west side of raft island back in June of 1999. Casting a krocodile spoon off the beach with 6lb test. Fish hit hard and took tons of line and the entire time I thought I was fighting an early coho. Brought it to the beach and it measured 23.5 inches. I didn't get any pictures but it was bright and silvery with a tinge of yellow and green.


Streamer

In GH the cuts have recovered some but it is different as well just different where you find them. The thing on cuts here is that they took a habitat hit big time but weathered it in the old days. Modern timber harvest played a role and the biggest not being what one would think. The roads did and do damage but the greatest impact was that the roads created access for trapping beaver. So areas once not worth the walk & time for a trapper now were. Add to it the thing that beaver just love culverts and I have had to remove dams at the mouth of a 8 ft culvert so they have to be removed. Weyco had a guy that would use 4 in woven wire and metal fence post to build a fence away from the mouth of the pipe after trapping was limited and it worked mostly as the beaver uses the fence as its anchor for the dam.

We all like to blame habitat destruction and the picture of devastation jumps out but many times it is not that dramatic but rather death by a thousand wounds. Beaver ponds are critical to both trout and Coho and can be a real pain for anyone from a home owner to farmers. As my boss once said " they work for food, don't ask for a raise, and do not have a union " Beaver ponds are a critical link to the health of many fish and wildlife species. No ponds dimished watershed health for everything from fish to birds just plain everything.

The wolf restoration in Yellowstone has allowed the beavers to recover and they are creating ponds and such to the benefit of the fish and ecosystem.

In eastern Oregon they are trying artificial beaver dams (in hopes of helping the beavers) in some smaller streams. With the beavers and their dams the streams don't downcut as much, sediment is retained, riparian shade returns and the water table in the surrounding floodplain rises which the sub irrigates the pastures.

Good info on the beavers, guys.
I see Beaver in the larger rivers and then in sloughs, but do not come across as many in the smaller streams as I did in my youth.

It is odd how wildlife changes in different time periods.
In coastal WA, we had a ton of skunks as a kid, very few Raccoons, an no Opossums..
now it is possums and Raccoons-Skunks are rare. Even Porcupine seem to have come from nowhere to be seen often as roadkill.

Nutria are more common than Muskrat.

Osprey nested in trees and it is now 95+% artificial platform, and Bald Eagles and Peregrines are commonplace-nice post DDT recovery.

Canada Geese were not in anywhere near the numbers they are now, but in my area, ducks are far less common. No Wood Ducks in a couple of decades.

The fish-as we old(er) timers know, are a total different ballgame as well. On the lower Chehalis (pre-1980's), there were carcasses of huge kings in the Fall, and upper Quinault was full of Bald Eagles feeding on carcasses in feb/march. Not much anymore.

The lack of carcasses feeding the entire stream ecosystem is something that was finally fully realized-bringing small "repair" by bringing dead hatchery fish and dumping them in some small streams is a start, but that has to be something that is impossible to fix for the big picture where there are little fish population numbers so no carcasses to be harvested. How can streams be starved of food and be expected to revive yearly?

So back to the great comments by RIVRGUY and CARCASSMAN, YES! Alot more than one or two things to blame here.

It takes a functioning ecosystem for the beavers to do their thing.


Here in western Washington man has altered the landscape so that in many areas the beaver can not find adequate food supply. They feed on the bark and inner bark of trees such as aspen, cottonwood, alder, willow, etc. and not on the conifers that are the base of the monoculture that is typical of industrial timber lands.

Historically the bulk largest coastal cutthroat were non-anadromous fish. Lowland lakes with spawning tributaries, oxbow sloughs and side channels and beaver ponds where the core of coastal cutthroat habitats. Prior to the introduction of exotic species in those habitats and land use changes many of those types of habitats would produce coastal cutthroat in excess of 24 inches (largest I ever saw was a 30 inch fish) with a few giants in excess of 10#s. The number of waters today that are capable of consistently producing such fish has been greatly reduced over the last 50 years.

Curt

Curt, great info. I am curious, since I never saw any of the really, really big beaverpond cutthroat or lake cutthroat, were they deep bellied-rounded like a big brook trout can get-or just long and healthy? I guess trying to wrap my head around a high 20-s to 30" fish is tough. Even the spotting pattern must have been amazing.

I can imagine a beaver pond fish-like a lake fish, would not need to burn alot of calories in still water and being piscivorous, would be getting alot of meals in one big bite? I remember even a 12 inch beaver pond trout would have sculpins inside so they started to eat fish early.
Now I think of it, I did see one of the monster Cutts in the 70's briefly. The 6-7 pound coastal cutthroat I saw-without knowing fully where it came from, is now a ghost fish. No pics, it seemed like a Brown Trout (fully Cutt, for sure) in shape-sort of, a deflategate football, and a brute! Long jaws, thick tail and arched back.
Spotted belly. Those odd yellow spots, too.

Seems like another species "lost" not genetically, but topographically/environmentally? so there is hope I suppose

Osprey -
The condition of those large cutthroat dependent on the time of year. The fish from late winter/spring were typically kelts and often on the skinny side. Late summer/fall/early winter were in better conditions as with most coastal cutthroat tended to be less robust than brook trout.

The very largest fish came from large lakes with a substantial forage base. The biggest I saw came from Lake Whatcom. The biggest from beaver ponds that I personally saw was about 6# and saw pictures of larger fish. As you would expect the beaver pond fish were typically heavy spotted and colored. The large lake fish were more silver in coloration except at spawning time and the immature fish often had no or faint throat slashes.

Curt

Good info, Curt. Amazing to think of the fish in the old days that swam the waters. If conditions stayed anywhere near the same for 100's or 1000's of years, there probably were some mind-bending fish in our waters we never had a chance to ponder.


A nice cutthroat

** not my fish

another spotted yellowbelly
*not my pic

This is one of the cooler threads I've read in a while. I forgot the details, but my dad's old fishing buddy caught a 15? Pound cutthroat out of lake Stevens. I think the picture is still hanging in Greg's. Probably over 15 years ago by now though.
I lost one in a creek 2 years ago that looked about 3 pounds or better, crystal clear water. That was a heart breaker.

wow! what a beautiful fish.

From The Olympian- reportedly from a south sound river, a cutthroat from the 1950's or 60's.

Looks to be in that 6 pound range I am guessing.

Although I have never seen a really big Cutthroat that spotting pattern looks awfully Rainbow to me.

Having said that, I was at a meeting of bios once and somebody ran a series of slides for us to ID. Every fish that looked like a Coastal Cutt was a genetic rainbow and every one that looked like a rainbow was a genetic Cutthroat. So, I know looks can be deceiving.

I mean, some politicians look human........

I thought the same too, somewhat-I was just passing along what someone had sent me some time back and the info involved.
The kype looks more rainbow-ish..the maxillary is long..cutthroat-like, Spotting is a tough one.and-yep, alot of the scientist think most any big cutthroat we might run into is likely a hybrid between a coastal rainbow and a cutthroat.

It is a tough call