Birthday steel

Great pix-THANKS. I'm back as soon as I have gas $.

very sweet! nice domestic.... how did it fight?

Fichy those are some great pic's and what a way to spend another day on earth ..
Maybe you can post a pic or 2 of pa's fish (with his blessings).. I have a few here of his SR Slam (king,coho & steel) but haven't had any time or ambition to do so yet..
Another week and we will be putting the color BROWN on the board as well :)..

Thanks Bro..

ORIGINAL: Lacrosse Ref

very sweet! nice domestic.... how did it fight?

LR, is entirely correct! I thought it was Skamania, but I'm entirely wrong. (Nothing new there). It's a Washington strain  that are called, just as he said, DOMESTICS. They're late  fall spawners. Never saw a rainbow that was a fall spawner before. Oh well, live and learn. Jack, I hope your cat lives a few more lives. Maybe he only used 7 up the 9....

Charlie

Tuna; one of these days brother ;)

Domestic rainbows: I never understood why they called them "domestics"???? They are lake run fish... but yes; for the past 22 years I've always heard them be referred to as domestics... i guess it was just the term that was coined for them to distinguish them from steelhead. They can get pretty frikkin huge and Iv e seen them spawn up until january... they are beauties for sure...

From what I read on the DEC site, the fish I caught is a strain of fall spawner that is used to stock streams and ponds throughout the state. It is  generally short and stocky, maxing out around 24", and reaches 5-8 lbs. It also, like the Skams, gets fin clipped. It's very confusing, as there are a number of strains that fall under the heading "domestic".  I believe I've seen pics of the Mcloud strain, also known as Redbands, (hey, I've actually fished for the redbands in the Mcloud, spent lots of time in NorCal) that have grown pretty large in Lake Ontario and the other lakes they've been planted in. I'd bet there are lots of mutts and Heinz 57 fish out there, too. I learned just enough to never jump to a conclusion again. I know exactly jack squat, except they're fun to catch.  That, and to use pink except when they want chartreuse...or blue.  Or something else...
 
Charlie
 

I believe the Wytheville (Montana) strain rainbow trout raised at the Randolph hatchery and widely stocked by N Y state were eggs from the McCloud River.

Or I might be making it up!

The oldest public trout hatchery in the western hemisphere is in Caledonia NY, still operating and turning out fish for the LO system (I want to say browns) and all the Splake that confuse you in some adirondak ponds (A new NY Brook Trout Record! Aw, rats, it's a splake). This hatchery was built by Seth Green, considered the father of modern fish culture. Seth is credited with bringing the shad to the west coast, and as I remember with bringing the McCloud strain rainbows back to Spring Creek, the water source for Caledonia. From there they went all over the East Coast(late 1800's early 1900's). Every now and then someone still catches a wild rainbow from Spring Creek. When NYS started stocking rainbows into Lake Ontario in the 50's and they came back to places like 4 mile creek and Shipbuilder's creek, and even made it up the Genesee, sewer that it was back then, it was those fish. When the modern program started, they obtained Chamber's Creek stock and also eggs/fish from Michigan, which were stockier as I recall. Skamanias should be very similar to Chambers creek fish, but they run early. They all spawn in the spring, but the rule in science is that there are always exceptions (why folks like WB and me were allowed to live, maybe!) You can get a really good background on races of steelhead on the West Coast from Trey Combs' book "Steelhead Fly Fishing." I know a lot of the DEC folks at the top levels for LO, and none of them were around when this circus got started, and DEC purges a lot of files with much too great a regularity for there to be a good paper trail, but this is what I recall.

I bet Ed Mills or Tom Eckert would know if anyone can ask them.

L13

Back at big Mac as the phone/internet/tv is still out,people 1/3 mile from me have service but nothing for me,should be interesting when I get the next bill.Well at least we have our DVD and will be looking at more of "Band of Brothers" tonight and then some Civil War stuff,times like this let one know how much I miss the tech stuff.However,I miss the SR already and I'm getting the itch again.

Pa - you are in SE Pa? correct? Sorry to hear you got hammered that bad. I was amazed my power only flickered a few times last weekend and lost interweb for 1/2day..

I have Verizon DSL. I cannot comprehend how my phone works, but interweb doesn't, yet they share the same wire..

ORIGINAL: dimebrite

Something must've happened somewhere with cross strains... charlie is correct with them averaging 5-8 lbs but there are some bulls every now and then that show up... mostly males I've seen in the teens range...

(

What with what?
There is of course cross breeding going on.
Point is vitually all the rainbow eggs brought here (domestic) started with McCloud River egg stock.

If you are saying that if they grow to that size they must be crossed with steelhead I think that is a misconception.
As I posted ALL rainbows retain the urge to wander looking for optimal conditions.
Since there are no barriers here they go to the lake like steelbows.
They have a tendency toward staying near shore.
Eat more crustations than minnows.

Rainbows imported to the finger lakes do the same thing and were doing it for generations before
steelhead eggs were planted.
They grew to the upper teens.

The same biologists that closed some small trib in the fall even though they ran in numbers in the spring?
They told us we didn't know what WE were talking about until we brought a dead one in and laid it on their desk in Avon.

As Lucky wrote almost nobody remains from the early C creek plants and much of the record is also gone.

I had DEC officers tell me that none of the L O planted fish would bite and you had to snag them.
Browns and steelbow along with Pacific salmon.
Just because they couldn't do it it was impossible.
I have little faith in DEC biologists.

Yo, look at the friggin' genome I just  hooked! It's a mitochondrial monsta! Next time ize hook a fish i can't identify it ain't making it to no report.   Is the ability to make a drag smoke dominant or recessive?
 
Charlie

......

Professor, I won't be no class clown no more.    WB, you've never met me, so you have little knowledge of how much I value it. A little humour intended, not a comment.  However,  this forum is not that important to me, it may be to others.