Blueback Trout

[JB in SC]

Seems I recall reading about similarly colored Maine Brookies in one of Jim Babb's books. Very cool looking regardless..

[LMarshall]

Brk Trt:

That is a really beautiful fish. The variations in color always amaze me. Was that fish from the Conn. River drainage? I've caught brookies in central MA within the Conn. River drainage that exhibited similar coloration; a dark gray-blue back with gold specks, par marks, a light gold tint to the sides, and no green whatsoever. I haven't seen fish like this anywhere else; possibly a surviving native sub-species or phenotype? I Have no idea.

[BrkTrt]

Actually I guess it would be considered the Housatonic River drainage.

I too have never seen such coloration.

I sent out an inquiry to CT DEP to see what their take is on it.




- Brk Trt

[Alpinefly]

A Sunapee would have a much lighter spotting !!! This has the Brookie spotting and Sunapee spotting along with a lot of the true Sunapee colors !!! Prolly crossbred between the two !!!!!! Beautiful trout !!!

[LMarshall]

A Sunapee would have a much lighter spotting !!! This has the Brookie spotting and Sunapee spotting along with a lot of the true Sunapee colors !!! Prolly crossbred between the two !!!!!! Beautiful trout !!!

I wouldn't get too excited... From what I've read the Sunapee Trout was never found outside Lake Sunapee, until it was stocked in a few alpine lakes in Idaho. I think the Blueback Trout persists in a pond that is part of Bangor's water supply (ironically enough also due to stocking if I'm not mistaken, gotta love the bucket biologist..), but is extinct from the Rangely lakes. There's another extinct species of charr (the Silver Trout) that inhabited Dublin Lake in southern NH and another pond in VT, but again I don't think this fish was ever found anywhere else.

It's more likely that some individuals in the stream where Brk Trt caught this fish carry a recessive gene that causes the blue coloration. If a lot more fish like this are found in that stream there could be something genetically unique about that particular population.

I understand that native populations of brook trout were wiped out from most watersheds within the historic native range at one time or another due to anthropogenic environmental change, implying the possibility of a significant loss of genetic diversity within the species. Nowadays most wild populations were propagated at some point from hatchery raised fish. So I wonder if some of the uniquely colored brookies represent relict populations of native fish that somehow survived the last 400 years or so of dramatic environmental change? In the central MA stream I mentioned earlier, all the individuals I've caught so far exhibit an apparently unique coloration compared to other fish I've caught in New England, but without genetic testing there's really no way to know if that's a significant observation.

[LMarshall]

Here's a photo I took this summer of a fish from that central MA stream:

[Alpinefly]

This would seem to be one of those Dr. Behnke questions as to both the genetics and geographical distribution !!!! The argument could go many different waysand the only way to prove is DNA testing as Mashall stated !!!

[terry]

I sent out an inquiry to CT DEP to see what their take is on it.- Brk Trt

Let us know if you get a response

[BrkTrt]

I recieved an email response that the info I submited was forwarded to a fisheries biologist for review.


Will let you know of the results.




- Brk Trt

[LMarshall]

I've been browsing through Nick Karas' Brook Trout on google books: http://books.google.com/books?id=j35ZD6 ... q=&f=false

This is a comprehensive and well researched work, so take a look, the answers to some of the questions in this topic are probably in there ;)