Meat color

[Renneberg]

Browns also eat alot of crayfish which also turns the meat a orange color.

Trout from lakes with a good population of crayfish will usally have a orange color to the meat too.

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"Study to be quiet"

[turiprap]

The flesh of hatchery fish can be manipulated by diet to be rendered orange. Hatchery workers feed the fish pellets augmented with caretenoids for the last few weeks of the fish' hatchery existence - sort of like "finishing" beef with a heavy corn diet.

[radke22]

Some trout have white meat and others, like the ones i caught last weekend, were bright orange. What does it mean when the flesh is different color. My grandparents told me the more orange the meat is, the more wild the fish is, and stocked trout have more white meat. Is this true?

[Jim W]

For the most part yes it is true.

The main reason for meat color is simply what they eat. A "wild" fish's diet could be entirely minnows/shiners in turn a whiteish meat.

However not too many trout just eat minnows.
One of the main reasons for pink or reddish meat is fresh water stream shrimp.

Jim W