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I have been electrofishing probably 100 times or so, but never on a big river from a boat, untill today. I got to go with F&G and the Henry's Fork Foundation and tag some browns for their radio telemetry study. We went Chester to Fun Farm. It was awesome. It was pretty cool to see some of the bigger fish that are in there. I won't be too long winded about it but I attached some pics of two big ones (5.25 and 7.5 lbs) and one that wasn't particularly huge, but that had an interesting spotting pattern.
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Nice fish. I wonder if there is a possibility that the one with a few spots is a hybrid of some sort? Maybe a cross between a brown and a rainbow?
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Thanks for the pics and information. That one is very strange. Can Browns hybridize?
Windriver
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[quote windriver]Thanks for the pics and information. That one is very strange. Can Browns hybridize?
Windriver[/quote]
I don't think so without the help of biologists. Different spawning times.
Now if you do cross a brook + brown= tiger
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As far as I know, browns can only hybridize with brook trout and atlantic salmon, but for sure not with rainbows or cutts. That one just had a cool spotting pattern. I've noticed that a lot of browns from south america have similar patterns too but it's not very common here.
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What was the fish count?
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I think we tagged 16. We didn't actually count all the fish we caught, we were strictly looking for adult brown trout. so we didn't even net any rainbows or the smaller browns. but there were plenty of them.
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I haven't ever had an opportunity to electrofish, but I bet spending the day with the F&G conducting a survey is an educational experience. I have a couple of pics from last month of fish that were taken with the more conventional rod and reel method. My theory is that much like most species of ducks, the males are more colorful and the females coloring enables them to more easily blend into their surroundings. I suppose that some type of hybridization is possible as well, because as another poster already mentioned the Brookie/Brown hybrid does exist. No Brookies in the Big Wood that I'm aware of, just nice size Browns in the fall!
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Individual browns can really look quite different even in the same water. In the Spanish Fork drainage in Utah I'd say about 5% of the browns I catch have very few spots similar to the one you posted. Don't recall catching many others like that elsewhere however.
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