Natural Born Trout

[trythisonemv]

24 minutes ago, tjm said:

I'm not aware of any left in the streams locally but there were a few places that had trout long after the rearing experiments failed.

They are there and reproducing quite well. I have caught fish from 8 lbs down too three inches or less

[trythisonemv]

29 minutes ago, trythisonemv said:

They are there and reproducing quite well. I have caught fish from 8 lbs down too three inches or less

It has a big spring and some big gravel shoals and access to several large creeks and one river . 

[bfishn]

50 minutes ago, tjm said:

...@bfishn how much time passes between the swimup stage and the fully scaled 3" fingerlings I catch?

Lots of variability there. I typically got mine to 3" in ~4 months. I imagine wild fish could take up to a year.

As far as state/federal hatcheries go, the ones I've visited all had the ability to produce their own eggs. Having that ability doesn't always mean that's what you do though. I stripped, fertilized and incubated from my own brood stock a couple years, but having less than 50 brood sows meant you'd get a viable batch only every few days. That means you have multiple groups in the hatchery at different stages which is a big PITA. I found it preferable to buy 40-50,000 eggs that all hatched together, then stage out several groups with varying feed rates so I could have several sizes available to market.

[tjm]

Do they lose the parr markings with age or size?

[bfishn]

21 minutes ago, tjm said:

Do they lose the parr markings with age or size?

Don't know.

[trythisonemv]

1 hour ago, tjm said:

Do they lose the parr markings with age or size?

I've caught pretty big trout still parred up out of crane.. some six inches to 7. I think it's as they mature. Whether that's dietary or just age or both I'm not  💯