Rainbow/Brook Hybrid

Anybody ever hear of this? I never have, and could not "google" anything on the matter.
I caught this guy today and it looked like a rainbow trout with the exception of the WORM marks or squiggles normally characteristic of a brook trout on the back. Rainbows usually have spots on the back. Very interesting none the less.

Very unique at the least.

ORIGINAL: pensfan1

Think it's called a "tiger" trout.

A "tiger" is a brook-brown hybrid. This appears to be a rainbow-brook hybrid.

This is a tiger I caught last year. They look a lot different.

Nope thats a tiger, they have differnt degrees of coloration. The state does not stock Tigers anymore only clubs.
Here is a Brook-bow hybrid image from a private hatchery.

It does have a lateral line like a bow does, but I've seen many color variations on pics of Tigers. I never caught one, so I'm no expert. But It would be pretty hard for that to happen in nature (brook/bow) but there are a few wild tigers. Should have kept it and sent some DNA samples to a lab, CSI style, haha !
I would bet it's just a Tiger with strange color, but you never know. It doesn't look like the ONLY image of a brook/bow that I've ever seen.

looks like a pellethead to me bro

the gene pool at pa hatcheries is totally mixed.... but that trout is a tiger and they do indeed have varying degrees of coloration... gotta love the pelletheads lol lol

ORIGINAL: DJ2007

You can rally see the purple/rainbow marks on the fish's side though. That's what make me think brook-bow.

It just kind of looks gray to me, like a concrete raceway.

Bow/burpit hybrid called a borpit. Need to lay it on brick to see if it curls to be 100% sure u no.

ORIGINAL: Cold

The fish pictured by the OP looks like a typical stocked bow to me, complete with busted jaw.

DJ's fish looks to be a stocked brown.

I really don't see any brown in that mutant.

This is a stock brown from the same stream/same day

That's almost certainly a tiger trout. Rainbow trout don't have spots that low on the gill plate. Tiger trout are very rare in the wild (browns and brookies having different numbers of chromosomes), but they can be breed fairly easily in hatcheries. The Fish Commission was doing some experimental stocking of tiger trout for a while, but as far as I know they've stopped. That doesn't mean there aren't still a few specimens in their hatcheries.

Additionally, as was mentioned, commercial hatcheries produce the fish and so they can be stocked by private organizations like sportsmens' clubs.

I've caught a few in Pennsylvania in recent years, including an 18 inch in Meadow Run and a few in Loyalhanna Creek (a nicely colored specimen is pictured below).



The Loyalhanna tigers were almost certainly stocked on the Rolling Rock property upstream. 

What is a splake?

ORIGINAL: DJ2007
I really don't see any brown in that mutant.

This is a stock brown from the same stream/same day

You've never caught a stocked brown trout that was as pale as the one in your picture?

Also...every brown youve ever caught in a given stream always have similar coloration?

Your catch = fresh stocked brown, from what I can see in that pic. Nice fish, but not a tiger.

Rainbow trout don't have spots that low on the gill plate.

Oh okay...







I dont know wtf I was thinking.

Cold: My mistake. It should have read they don't typically have spots that low on the gill plate. The part of the gill cover (operculum) which becomes deep red during spawning is usually devoid of spots. That's the case even in the last picture you posted.



It's not always the case, of course. There are a lot of color variations. But in this case, the combination and location of worm like markings and general coloration leads me to believe that this is a tiger trout. I could certainly be wrong.