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[icefishingman]

Fished strawberry Saturday. Aqua vu showed tons of fish, not a lot of take takers. My dad got a nice what we thought was a bow. I need your help with this. It had a rainbow tail and dots along the end. But a lot looks like a salmon. I've had two people tell me salmon, me and mackinaw fisher think rainbow-Koke hybrid. But is that even a possibility. It had orange meat which bows don't have. No cutt markings at all. Anyways it was 23 without doing the proper measurements that make it longer, probably a 24 inch fish.
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[doggonefishin]

Nice rainbow! It just had fewer spots than average but there are a few and the fins are classical rainbow. Most Strawberry bows and cutts that have been there a while have tasty red or orange meat.

[quote icefishingman] I've had two people tell me salmon, me and mackinaw fisher think rainbow-Koke hybrid. But is that even a possibility.[/quote]

No.
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[MichiganAngler]

I don't think it's a Koke. The color is there, but the tail and head seems all wrong. (see attached pic)

Seems like a colorless rainbow. Almost looks like a steelhead.
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[El_Matador]

Looks like a rainbow to me. I've seen the lack of spots on a number of rainbows at Paiute and Otter Creek:






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[icefishingman]

I agree with the spotless rainbow. Just what gets me is the pink meat and huge teeth, which I normally don't see on bows.
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[makinawfisher19]

Looking at it closer it seems more like a rainbow to me now.
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[mule_skinner45]

Can't tell very well from the pic., but if it has orange pelvic and anal fins it is a cutthroat or cutthroat hybrid.
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[4pointmuley]

Yeah the rainbows we caught from Deer Creek had reddish orange meat and they were very tasty.
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[Springbuck]

Totally a nice big rainbow.

Older holdover rainbows have nice flavor and good orange meat.

Rainbow trout don't hybridize with salmon that I know of. In fact I was very surprised to find that brooks and browns can.
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[Beautiful-Fish]

Rainbow
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[Jedidiah]

The white fin tips tell the story, it's a rainbow.

About the orange flesh, all the big bows I catch have orange or red flesh, probably because of the diet that is present where I catch them. I've never caught a bow out of Strawberry that wasn't orange like a salmon inside.

One thing about rainbow trout, they're actually landlocked steelhead salmon. Literally the exact same species as the steelhead that run up the rivers of the northwest, and they can easily develop flesh just like salmon if they have the right diet and conditions.
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[chinook]

The color of the meat has to do with the diet. A lot of crustrations in a fish diet will produce orange to almost red flesh. All my rainbows from strawberry have good color meat.
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[retch_sweeney]

I believe steelhead are simply sea-run (anadromous) rainbow trout, not salmon, although trout and salmon are salmonids.
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[Jedidiah]

You're right, I keep calling "steelhead" salmon when in reality they are not. Ultimately the result is the same on the dinner table in regards to the diet of the fish though.
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[bozlee]

The Majority of the Rainbows we caught at East Canyon this summer looked just like that fish not a lot of rainbow to them. All of them had Orange meat. Tasty!
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[Igottabigone]

Cutthroat
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[harlin]

[quote Igottabigone]Cutthroat[/quote]

It is a rainbow. One way to tell the difference between a rainbow and a cutt is to look at the mouth opening.

On a Cutt, the mouth opening goes into the eye, and/or past the eye:

On a rainbow, the mouth opening rarely goes past the eye. In fact, I've never seen it go past the eye. If it does, then it is likely either a cutt/hybrid or the mouth has been damaged by fisherman, etc..

Even if you look at pictures of steelhead, the mouth opening does no go into the eye..Same as rainbow trout.
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