Palomino Trout

[Renneberg]

I seen a show last night where the angler caught Palomino trout. They are a very cool lookin trout. I thought I'd show everyone what they look like and what info I've found about them.

Palomino trout or Blue Rainbow Trout are a mutation that occur in hatchery production of rainbow trout. So far, this rare genetic glitch has occurred only in rainbow and brown trout. To understand the rarity of Blue Rainbow Trout one hatchery recorded 30 rainbow trout were blue in a spawn of about four million eggs. One year, more blue trout might appear. Another year, fewer.
"They are typically separated early on from the other trout because they're weaker fish and unless they are set aside, during the first year the other fish usually eat them, or they succumb to the rigors of the hatchery's high-density environmental conditions."

Also Blue Rainbow Trout don't reproduce. Neither the males nor the females develop mature reproductive organs.

"We've been getting blue rainbow trout and blue brown trout for some 30 years or more, as long as I've been with the Commission," says Bill Kennedy, Bureau of Fisheries Training Officer. "Years ago there was a concerted effort to produce a line of blue trout. But Dr. James Wright, a Penn State geneticist, determined that something was wrong with them physiologically."
Wright identified them as genetic anomalies, or mutations. He determined that blue trout probably suffer from a thyroid deficiency. A fish's thyroid gland produces hormones that affect its coloring during all its life stages. Thus, the hormonal mix-up lets these fish form only the bluish pigment.

"Blue trout are extremely rare," Kennedy says, "and they are not something we can selectively breed. Hatcheries keep them as show fish."

I wish they stocked some of them in S.E. Minnesota trout streams!

------------------
"Study to be quiet"