Cut throat in Taney

[trythisonemv]

So when I was fishing Oct 8th I caught a trout with very bright orangish red markings under its chin. It was clearly a cutthroat.  What's the likely hood of my not being crazy? I wished after the fact I'd snapped a picture if the markings considering it was a weird fish. I was so hyper focused on the big browns I dismissed it.

[trythisonemv]

You cant see it but this was the fish. There is orange along his gill plate and there was a thick stripe under the lower jaw . 

[netboy]

Looks like a rainbow to me. Cutthroats don't have the red stripe on their sides. I catch quite a few rainbows on the Bull Shoals and Norfork tailwaters with orange or red slash markings on their bottom jaw as well as orange on their bellies. Seems to always be fish that have been in the river for a while. May be due to the natural foods they eat instead of the pellets in the hatchery. Also, they have darker colors like the one in your picture.

Here is a picture of a cutthroat for comparison...

 

[FishnDave]

Has anyone caught Cutbows in Taney?

[tjm]

I've caught a number of trout in RRSP that looked like that, in years past. Some Coastal rainbow genetics, I think. I've also caught rainbows that didn't have a distinct stripe.

Cutthroat don't have that many spots around the head, if my memory serves and both cut bows and rainbows should have a bit of white at the tips of fins. The Cutbows should still have fewer spots around head like the cut throat. Both the cut throat and cut bow have more fork in the tail than rainbow.

However they were close relatives before man started messing with them and I'm sure that neither species is pure any longer. We have been making them artificially for 140+ years and everybody loves an experiment.

[tjm]

Image of a cut throat shows few spots near head and forked tail, but it also shows some pink line and no white on fins-

Image of RedBand trout  with red gill plates and white tip lower fins- a large part of the Mo trout heritage I think, if we believe the McCloud River story

A female rainbow showing more pink/purple on gill plate and still has the white edge on lower fin and many spots near head and gill plate

[Ryan Miloshewski]

I asked Shane about this a while back and it's just part of the genetics in some of the rainbows. One year, I think 2018, there were a ton stocked in the lake and as they matured the orange markings started to appear. Like @netboy said it's hard to mistake a cutthroat. 

 

[bfishn]

4 hours ago, tjm said:

...I'm sure that neither species is pure any longer. We have been making them artificially for 140+ years...

^^That.

I created at least a dozen Frankentrout varieties at the farm in ~8 years, and that's small time. Only twice was it intentional to combine outstanding examples of perceived common lineage. Mostly it was simply what was available. Heck, I hauled some sow rainbows to a Neosho farm because my males were done and his weren't. It's aquaculture.

I'm impressed with our SOTA genetic information technology. Problem is, it's 'new', and samples of pure strains from pre-commercialization no longer exist in many cases.

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

@grizwilsoncaught this at Taneyfest in Dec 2018. Looked like a rainbow otherwise. 

[trythisonemv]

Wish I had the picture of under side. It was super orange Along the chin area. Too may spots though. Thanks for checking my craziness fellas 😂