07-18-2012, 09:15 PM
Too often fishermen misidentify fish because they get caught up in colors. Many of you are looking and worrying too much about the colors of the fish and not looking at the tell-tale signs of species identification of trout--spotting pattern to be more specific.
If you look closely at the pictures, you will notice a couple of things about the spotting pattern of this fish that scream--"not brook trout". 1) The spots are irregularly shaped and not uniform in pattern--brook trout spots are very regularly shaped and very circular. 2) The irregularly shaped spots of this fish also lack the blue halos that brook trout possess. These two things alone tell me that there is a good chance that fish is NOT a brook trout.
With that in mind, a couple other things about this fish scream tiger trout--1) the length and lack of girth of this fish is simply out of characteristic of Utah brook trout. In over 30 years of not only fishing for brook trout on the Boulder Mountains and southern Utah but also gill netting and shocking trips with my father on very good lakes including the lake with the current state record fish, I have NEVER seen a brook trout over 22 inches long. A 27-inch long brook trout is more than an anomaly...it is just not out there. And, any brook trout over 17 inches really starts to get humpy and stumpy in appearance; they are exceptionally round and fat. 2) Many have noted that the tail is simply not forked enough to be a splake...I would concur. But, in my eyes, that tail has a slight fork. Brook trout do not. The parent species of tiger trout are brown trout and brook trout...the brown does have a slight fork, however. 3) I know the lake where this fish was caught. I have seen both large brook trout and large tiger trout from this lake. Just two years ago another tiger trout was turned in as the new state record brookie and later identified. Tiger trout in this lake have been known to look very much more like the parent brook trout and less like the tiger trout you might see in other places. Brook trout in this lake are very much like other brook trout in other lakes on the Boulder Mountain....my father caught a very large brookie from this lake several years ago that exceeded twenty inches. This fish--now mounted and on display in the Southern Region DWR office--looks nothing like the fish in question. It is shorter, fatter, much more colorful, and displays much more circular spots with distinct blue halos. If I can find that picture, I will post it.
In the end, although the fish in question is unquestionably a trophy, it is not a state record brookie and I am glad it wasn't ultimately misidentified as such. I also hope that this slight mess leads the DWR into some stricter guidelines in how fish are identified and considered to be record catches before press releases go out. I congratulate the fisherman on his fine catch and although I really wish we did have a new state record caught, I highly doubt that a state record brook trout is currently alive in Utah or that one will be caught in the near future...
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If you look closely at the pictures, you will notice a couple of things about the spotting pattern of this fish that scream--"not brook trout". 1) The spots are irregularly shaped and not uniform in pattern--brook trout spots are very regularly shaped and very circular. 2) The irregularly shaped spots of this fish also lack the blue halos that brook trout possess. These two things alone tell me that there is a good chance that fish is NOT a brook trout.
With that in mind, a couple other things about this fish scream tiger trout--1) the length and lack of girth of this fish is simply out of characteristic of Utah brook trout. In over 30 years of not only fishing for brook trout on the Boulder Mountains and southern Utah but also gill netting and shocking trips with my father on very good lakes including the lake with the current state record fish, I have NEVER seen a brook trout over 22 inches long. A 27-inch long brook trout is more than an anomaly...it is just not out there. And, any brook trout over 17 inches really starts to get humpy and stumpy in appearance; they are exceptionally round and fat. 2) Many have noted that the tail is simply not forked enough to be a splake...I would concur. But, in my eyes, that tail has a slight fork. Brook trout do not. The parent species of tiger trout are brown trout and brook trout...the brown does have a slight fork, however. 3) I know the lake where this fish was caught. I have seen both large brook trout and large tiger trout from this lake. Just two years ago another tiger trout was turned in as the new state record brookie and later identified. Tiger trout in this lake have been known to look very much more like the parent brook trout and less like the tiger trout you might see in other places. Brook trout in this lake are very much like other brook trout in other lakes on the Boulder Mountain....my father caught a very large brookie from this lake several years ago that exceeded twenty inches. This fish--now mounted and on display in the Southern Region DWR office--looks nothing like the fish in question. It is shorter, fatter, much more colorful, and displays much more circular spots with distinct blue halos. If I can find that picture, I will post it.
In the end, although the fish in question is unquestionably a trophy, it is not a state record brookie and I am glad it wasn't ultimately misidentified as such. I also hope that this slight mess leads the DWR into some stricter guidelines in how fish are identified and considered to be record catches before press releases go out. I congratulate the fisherman on his fine catch and although I really wish we did have a new state record caught, I highly doubt that a state record brook trout is currently alive in Utah or that one will be caught in the near future...
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