Brown trout spots (pics)

[radke22]

What does it mean when 1 trout has 1,000 black spots and another has 50? Yesterday on the water I took some pictures with these two being the most different. Of the 30+ I caught, all but this one had just a few black spots.

[fisherking01]

maybe it's a sign to quit fishin? I'm guessing that every fish has different characteristics as do we. Cool pics, thanks for sharing. Keep on fishin. Brent

[Jim W]

Different strain of brown trout is all.

[WxGuy]

Good question and thanks for the pics, radke.

Like Jim said, they might be different strains.

I just had a great conversation with John Huber of DNR hatcheries at Crystal Springs which is right outside Elba. He was a wealth of knowledge, and I asked him about these two specific pictures.

All stocked brown trout in the entire state for inland stream trout lakes comes from the hatchery in Lanesboro. The browns they raise for stocking now are a combined strain of browns that came from the 3 streams in Southeast Minnesota that have the best natural reproduction (or at least had the best natural reproduction back in 1990 when they went with the strain they're using now). The 3 streams that offered up these original fish haven't been stocked with brown trout in over 30 years now and still have an abundance of great fish, which says a lot about our streams down here.

He had mentioned to me that while there might be some slight variance in strain, the coloration is likely due to one being male and one female (paler, shinier with more spots being female) that occurs around and after the time of the spawn. While there is no natural reproduction of any brown trout in any inland trout lakes, their biological clocks are still tuned in for a spawn.

Differences in spots and coloration that occurs in fish in our streams can also be due to environmental factors such as consistency of water temperature and type of forage.