Hi All,

Went fishing today and caught a little beauty today, around 2.5lb. Put up a pretty good fight and looked healthy.

When I got it home and filleted it the meat was a very pale colour not a strong pink as I would expect.

A friend of mine has suggested it may be a blue trout but as neither of us have caught one before its hard to know.

Is it a bad fish? or bad meat?

It looks ok but im not sure.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

The flesh colour depends what they've been eating. I'm sure it'll be fine.

I prseume its a stocked rainbow?

There is slight difference in flesh colour between bows and blues, but also has already posted, depends mainly on what the fish have been eating.
I.e, pellets.

Could also be a non-triploid rainbow which is getting ready to spawn- was it full of eggs or milt?

There were no eggs, but I guess it could have been a food thing. Do the pellets give the flesh color?

Depends if there is a high Carotene content in the pellets.When fish naturally eat lots of shrimps/hoglice/pea musels/corixa etc, their flesh becomes very pink.Lots of buzzers/caenis/ olives,etc pale flesh.

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

Has probably been in longer than other stocked fish you have caught.
Newly stocked fish have been fed on pellets heavilly dosed with canthaxanthin.
Is a chemical which gives their flesh a red colour, (which is deemed essential for table trout/salmon!)
Stocked fish that have survived more than two or three months still stay pinkish, but definately lose the dark reddish colour due to the change in diet.
Have a look here at the actual regulations for dosing the feed!!

http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scan/out81_en.pdf

You wonder why I dont eat stocked rainbows! lol
regards
bert

Canthaxanthin is a naturally occurring pigment, though - although the stuff in trout pellets is usually synthetic, it's the same substance that is found in the natural diet of salmon. Not something I would worry about consuming, personally.

I spooned a couple of trout yesterday at a spring-fed lake which is part of a fish-farm complex.

Both trout were stuffed with shrimps, a number of which were still alive and kicking when I swirled the contents of the spoon in the sample jar for a closer look.

I remarked to the owner that the shrimps may be why the trout from the lakes always have a deep red colour.

He said that he supplied to a couple of small forest ponds, small fish of around 1/2lb, but which put on weight in the ponds and still had a good red colour after being in there for quite some time.

On gutting one of the grown-on fish, it contained a whole crayfish and that was probably why they retained the deep red flesh even though they had lived for so long in the ponds.

Another venue that I fish that takes stock from the same place, and the fish there have very grey flesh on the overwintered catches.

Presumably no shrimp or crayfish for the trout to feast upon.

I have always associated bright red flesh to pellets/recently stocked fish and would rather eat a fish that has had a natural diet and a slightly paler flesh.

But as is the norm I am probably way off the mark!!

Plumpy