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[VAGAbond]

Trout are chameleon like in that they adjust their colour to match their surroundings.  I had this clearly illustrated some years back while fishing an alpine lake north of Whistler that had been stocked once years earlier, so only one strain of fish was present.  I located on the edge of deep water.  Casting out into the deep water I caught silver fish with blue backs and barely visible spots.  Casting the other direction into the shallow water yielded highly coloured fish.  We had always assumed that these represented fish in different stages of their life and that the silver fish were in better condition and more suitable for table fair.  On this day I was using an old rowboat with several inches of water sloshing around in the bottom.  I hooked one of the silvery fish which flipped off the hook and dropped into the water in the boat and promptly hid under the floorboards where I couldn’t easily retrieve it.  I continued fishing for a couple of hours and finally decided it was time to retrieve the fish from the boat and release it.  I was surprised to find that it had completely changed colour into one of the highly coloured ‘shallow water’ fish.

I wonder to what extent the highly coloured state is influenced by the strain of trouts typical colour characteristics and how much by the specific environment.   Certainly the spots don’t change but the other colours?

[Darko]

Trout are chameleon like in that they adjust their colour to match their surroundings.  I had this clearly illustrated some years back while fishing an alpine lake north of Whistler that had been stocked once years earlier, so only one strain of fish was present.  I located on the edge of deep water.  Casting out into the deep water I caught silver fish with blue backs and barely visible spots.  Casting the other direction into the shallow water yielded highly coloured fish.  We had always assumed that these represented fish in different stages of their life and that the silver fish were in better condition and more suitable for table fair.  On this day I was using an old rowboat with several inches of water sloshing around in the bottom.  I hooked one of the silvery fish which flipped off the hook and dropped into the water in the boat and promptly hid under the floorboards where I couldn’t easily retrieve it.  I continued fishing for a couple of hours and finally decided it was time to retrieve the fish from the boat and release it.  I was surprised to find that it had completely changed colour into one of the highly coloured ‘shallow water’ fish.

I wonder to what extent the highly coloured state is influenced by the strain of trouts typical colour characteristics and how much by the specific environment.   Certainly the spots don’t change but the other colours?

thanks for sharing Vaga