Sushi, you make an interesting point about planted trout(years ago)have made the Native fish far and few, or even extinct in some lakes. I never really thought of it that way. I shoot down the baiter/flyers/spinners that keep limits of 8 inch fish, simply because they are so much funner to catch the following year. So i thought, the more i release the more chance there will be bigger fish next year. ANd i couldn't see why other anglers don't want big fish(hence their keeping of them)but you have changed my ideas of it all now.

Maybe these fish(true natives) that i expect to be in these lakes, lurking under cover, waiting to pick off the next minnow or fly, really aren't even there. Well at least in the urban stocker lakes around the south sound area. How can you(us) be sure that any big fish we hook is or isn't a true native to that lake??? Is there a way to tell?

When i was 16, me and a good friend were fishing lake Fenwick, not known for anything but the usual stockers. And most stockers, around here atleast, seem to look a certain way. Either a purple stripe instead of pink or small tails, or dark bellies, and the bigger fish(which we consider hold-overs) either outgrow this dark look or came from a different batch of stockers or they are native. Anyways, we fished 6oz. weights with a 4 foot leader with a hotshot attached and trolled right off bottom. 20 minutes into it, we look out behind the boat and a nice rainbow jumped about 3 feet. Just as the head of the bow hit the water on it's way back in we noticed a weight also apeared and follow the arc of the rainbows jump. I slowely reeled him in and when i looked at him, he was unlike any rainbow i had ever seen. It had the typical markings but the spots were alot bigger than normal and the pink stripe wasn't pink, it was ice blue. Almost like glowing ice blue. Could this have been a native? Or did he just swim to close to the nuclear plant?

So i think you may be right Sushi. All my fish from that point on that i have caught out of local lakes for the past 15 years all look the same, but that one fish.

That sucks donkey $#%@ if this is true.