Cutthroats
I was recently wondering why cutthroats have never been introduced here in the eastern US. We have rainbows, browns & lakers intoduced here, along with "hatchery brookies" (replacing native populations) & hybrid golden rainbows (palominos) and tigers. How great it would be to catch a "real" grand slam with browns, brookies, rainbows and cutthroats, without traveling out west.
Does anyone know why this has never been accomplished? Just curious.
For a real challenge, try ice fishing with dry flies.
JB I don't really have a good answer to your question, as I don't know why they couldn't do it in some facet. However that said here in my neck of the woods getting a slam consists of catching all four native Cuthroat species. I shall try and name them. First we have the Yellowstone Cut, Bonneville Cut, Bear River Cutt, and last but not least the Snake River Fine Spotted Cut. Catching all of these with picture proof will get you a cetificate from the Wyoming Dept of Fish and Game. Last I heard only 500 certificates have been given out, and unfortunately none to me. If one plans it right a guy could get them in a day or two.
Brandon
Maryland Dept of Natural Resources stocked cutts on the North Branch Potomac up until 2007; I think they had a poor survival rate in the hatcheries and the stocking was discontinued. It was the one place I know of here in the east where you could get a trout Grand Slam.
Regards,
Scott
Last edited by ScottP; 04-20-2012 at 01:38 AM.
Cutthroat have proven to be more difficult to raise under hatchery conditions so, to fish for them, you have to go where they live. The coastal subspecies of cutthroat (Oncorhynchus clarki clarki) was probably the original species, from which the other subspecies evolved after becoming gographically isolated. The natural range of the coastal cutthroat is along the western slopes of the coastal mountains from the Eel River in northern California to Alaska's Cook Inlet. Where access to salt water is readily available, some of them will take to a semi-anadromous lifestyle and spend some months of each year feeding in estuaries and along the beaches. Some parts of Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia can provide almost year-round fishing for them. There are vast differences in the fighting abilities of the various subspecies of cutthroat. Most agree that the coastal cutt (especially if he's spent some time in the salt) has a definite edge and it has been said that, if they grew to the size of steelhead, no one would ever land one.
Last edited by Preston; 04-21-2012 at 07:02 PM.
The Bonneville and Bear River Cutthroats are two names of the same subspecies. The fourth one you're looking for is the Colorado Cutthroat, which is found in the Green River drainage in Wyoming.Originally Posted by moonlitflies
As far as why you don't find Cutts in the east very often, Preston was spot in in that they're difficult to raise under hatchery conditions. Obviously, though, they can be raised in hatcheries, so that doesn't fully explain why you rarely find them outside their native range. The main reason is two-fold: A) they're far more sensitive to water quality than, say rainbows. B) They're not considered as "sporting" of a fish as rainbows are. In actuality, B comes back to A. Back when they started stocking non-native trout back in the eastern US, the primary reason for doing so was because pollution/logging/etc. had degraded the water quality of those streams to the point where brook trout could no longer thrive. Rainbows, on the other hand, were very tolerant of low water-quality. So rainbows got spread across the country to replace native fish in streams where the water quality could no long sustain the natives. Over time, rainbow trout developed a reputation as the "most sporting" trout, simply because they were the most widespread. Today, most people would probably consider browns to hold that title (that's disputable, but that's a whole other topic), but at the time when stocking was running rampant, that was not yet the case.
So when you combine the fact that rainbows are incredibly easy to raise with the fact that they can withstand lower water quality and their reputation as a "sporting" fish, rainbows got the early nod over others as the fish to spread throughout the east.
Pretty much what Poke 'Em said.
My experience in SE, Central, and Northern Idaho and here in Western Montana is that bull trout, cutthroat, and brookies tend to be "headwaters" species, that is, they need the really high quality water, cold, fast, and clear to do well.
Rainbows do just fine in the headwaters, but they do just as well downstream where the conditions may be somewhat degraded, and where the bulls, cutts, and brookies don't do well, or at all.
Further on downstream, with the least favorable conditions, browns will do better than the rainbows, if the rainbows even do well. The "headwaters" species hardly have a chance in those places.
If the native brookies in the east couldn't survive a particular system, it's not at all likely the cutts would.
John
The fish are always right.
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