Has anyone ever seen anything like this fish? His gills were sticking out of both sides and flared all the time. Either his gills were too long, or they were swollen with some infection or something. They were like a red neon sign swimming around in the pool. Before I caught him I was really puzzled about what was in there.
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In every other way it appeared to be normal and healthy. He was about 12 to 13 inches long and about usual weight.
I am sorry I didn't get a better picture, but I was reluctant to pick him up. I was afraid my hands would get on his gills and I couldn't lay him down anywhere with out it doing some damage to his gills, so I just removed the fly without touching him.
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I've seen this before. Everything i've read indicates either a parasite or a toxin in the water. I'm no fish biologist and there are guys on this forum that know a lot more than I do so i'm sure you'll get some good feed back.
Can you say which body of water you caught this fish in?
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I've seen it before. Don't know what it means.
Windriver
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No, I can't say where, but it was the only fish there that I saw with this problem.
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I have seen before but thougght it looked more like the gill cover was to small rather than the gills to long. Maybe it was a bit of both I saw. Seems the fish was more white/opaque than the other fish I would catch. I also think the fins were wore down like a hatchery fish also.
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The only reason I ask where is, if it's a fairly isolated place you can lean more towards a parasite, if it's closer to town it could be either.
Long story short, I hope it wasn't close to town. I hate to think about water quality issues.
Avery's Adventure has a great background in fish quality, I'm curious to hear his take.
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I've seen this before and like lucabrasi I perceived it as the gill covers being to short, sometimes curled under themselves. I really don't know but a quick google search points to a disease called "short gill cover disease". Seems that some hatcheries have up to 10% infected fish. It looks like no one has identified the root cause but may be from over crowding or lack of oxygen. Some other articles pointed towards heavy metals contamination. I'd like to hear what others find out, idahoron have you ever seen this at the hatcheries?
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Only water quality problem is Cows with a capital C. Other than that I think it is pretty clean. I was thinking infection, or deformity of some kind. I tried to see if the gill covers were too short and it seemed like they might be a little, but it was more that the gills were too long for even regular covers.
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Curious if it was a planter or wild fish.
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They are all wild cutts. No other trout species or planters in with them.
I should add that this is a very isolated population. Since irrigation takes all of the water this stream doesn't connect with any other waters. It might connect in high water years in the spring time, but I don't know if it actually does.
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In hindsight I should have kept this fish, but at the time I just didn't think about it as I wasn't planning on harvesting anything.
Would have probably been better to have it out of the stream system. Oh well.
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