Southern Van Isle 9.4LB Rainbow

personally i would have thrown that one back. all fish in elk taste like mud in my opinion. plus those are the big breader fish, why not keep them making bigger fish. but good on ya beauty of a fish anyhow

"A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work"
 
quote:Originally posted by BoyWonder

personally i would have thrown that one back. all fish in elk taste like mud in my opinion. plus those are the big breader fish, why not keep them making bigger fish. but good on ya beauty of a fish anyhow

"A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work"
Click to expand...
That one wouldn't have the ability to breed ;)
 
They do try...
One thing is for certain that tripliods don't
 
You see dark fish in the lake at that certain time of the year. Standing water or not. The fish at Elk still migrate to the South end of beaver lake milling in and around the outflow that produces colquitze creek. Some do successfully spawn. In the case of the fish pictured above, if it in fact was a triploid then it would have been rendered sterile through engineering of it's strain.

I personally think the trout from any of the local lakes taste terrible. Very muddy. Of course the season does make a bit of differance and sometimes ( though I have given up on them all together ) can taste ok. Cowichan lake fish taste searun. Elk lake.... well as long as you don't mind the taste of old gym socks.....

As for letting it go..... would have been cool to be satisfied with a picture and measurements.( I know it was your personal choice though ) A nice replica could have been made and the fish could have been caught again next year and maybe even have looked like the three triploids below.

Looked like it was a great day on the water nonetheless. Congrats, they are in there !


HL
 
Ha ha boy wonder you would not have let that one go lol if you did you would be a better man than me.
 
The fish was a triploid female so it would not spawn, when I cleaned it, it had no visible reproductive organs. 10 years ago or so I have seen trout in Colquitz creek spawning, as well I have caught some very dark fish that are in spawning coloration, its been a few years since they have stocked trout that are able to spawn. So who knows if there are any left with the fishing pressure this lake gets. As for eating it, it tasted better than any other elk lake trout I have eaten, it had a very high fat content, baked some of it and smoked the rest, the smoked trout was very good. After releasing hundreds of trout this spring, I figure why not keep the one big one. In the 3 days before I caught the 9.4lb I had 4 over 3lbs, 2 over 4lbs, 2 5lbs+, and a 6.5lb plus numerous smaller ones. All fly caught and released, unharmed without even a picture.
 
I have heard of rainbows spawning in the creek that feeds the lake at the North launch. Whether they still do or not, I don't know, nor have I ever seen them in there.

Nice fish too.

Seafood, eat it, then catch more.
 
Had some good days last year on the lake. Hit a hold and nailed ten or twelve in a row that were all in the same range 4-6 lbs.

Good times. Haven't seen it like that for a while. Usually too many catchables to get to the big ones.
 
Nice, not sure if I like a couple of those rainbows in the pics, looks like they came out of a net pen or something, anyways, good luck and have a good summer, I'm off to the westcoast of the charlottes.
 
Was at elk today from shore. Hit 5 rainbows & 1 Cutty, Will let you know how they taste tomorrow. Kept one 3.5 pound rainbow. Was bleeding bad.

The cutty was about 4.5 pounds.

-Steve
 
quote:Originally posted by fishflyguy89

Was at elk today from shore. Hit 5 rainbows & 1 Cutty, Will let you know how they taste tomorrow. Kept one 3.5 pound rainbow. Was bleeding bad.

The cutty was about 4.5 pounds.

-Steve
Click to expand...
 
During the Elk Lake Derby, I showed the people from the Vancouver Island Fish Hatchery a 2.7 lb rainbow that had a cutthroat marking on one side of the underside of it's jaw. They said that many of the rainbows they stock have cutthroat markings but they are definitely rainbows and not cutthroats. Found this fact interesting.
 
Very few if any cutthroat left in that lake. Even in the early nineties there were slim to none but the ones you did catch were unmistakable. They were BIG and UGLY. YEllow, Lots of black spots and flame oragne gashes under the jaw. Used to get them to 8 pounds. I haven't seen any wild ones for years. Some of the largest were taken from Prospect. That lake too has had a similar fate in that you rarely see those wild hogs anymore.

What you see alot of is a Cuttbow type thing put in there by the hatcheries.
 
Fishflyguy89 that cutty was a rainbow in all likelihood.
Haven't seen any true Cutthroat much over 2 lb in recent
years. Caught one on Saturday May 15 that was about 1.5 lb
and released it. All of the large trout at Elk Lake and
our other local lakes are rainbows, although some have
characteristics similar to Cutthroats.
 
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