Smalma, Salmo g, or any other qualified bio types:

Click on this link and please tell us what affliction these fish suffer from.

GOOFY LOOKING FISH

Actually, anyone who knows is welcome to reply.

Thanks!

Well, I'm no biologist but it has always been my assumption that the fish received some sort of damage to it's nose when it was young. I have caught some planted trout that have had similar noses although not nearly as extreme looking more blunted and not turned down. I have caught them early in the year when their noses were still raw from the rearing pens and then later in the year they seemed to heal like that. I don't know if this is the case but just my observation.

If these are hatchery fish, I would say the deformities are a result of a genetic mutation. It's possible they are a result of an injury but not likely. I've seen genetic mutations in young hatchery fish that look very similar.

I believe they're hatchery fish because, although genetic mutuations occur in the wild, fish with genetic mutations don't usually survive long enough to reach the adult stage. Unless, of course, the mutation results in increased fitness, thereby passing along the genes for better survival. Genetic selection at it's best. But this ain't one of those benefical mutations.....

Which brings up the question, why have these fish survived? It's likely they spent their first year or so in a hatchery. This allows inferior genes to persist when normally they would be eliminated quickly. A classic case of how hatcheries can, under some circumstances, reduce the fitness of wild salmon.

BTW - I've seen some very signficant genetic mutations in hatchery fish, including a fish that had two heads on one body. That fish was almost 8 inches long.

that same fish or one real close to it was on this broad and some one is using it in thier atviar image. do not rember what the talk was about the possible causes for the defect.

To many of these at the hatchery.

Just remember that there are no ugly fish, some are just less pretty!

FishDoc,

I don't know how easy it will be to find, but there is a thread from a couple of years back that has several pics of fish like that...and a long discussion of what caused it.

I think I remember the consensus being that they probably got that way when they were juveniles in concrete hatchery pens...as all of them were hatchery fish.

If I'm remembering properly...

Fish on...

Todd

I think it's from people not handling fish properly and lifting them out of the water for a picture.

A few years back, I caught a coho with two mouths. The mouth that was in the normal location was mutated and fused shut. The fish had been feeding through a second, completely seperate, smaller mouth below the original. Too wierd. I shoulda got a pic...

Dam!

doesnt look like a springer to me.

you know what that fish said when he hit the wall..... "DAM!"

FNP,

Can't say for sure. The two most common causes that come to mind are healed injuries and deformities, the latter usually on hatchery fish. As another poster indicated, wild fish with deformities usually don't survive very long.

The strangest deformity (if you'd call it that) that I ever saw was a 6 pound albino winter steelhead. It was absolutely white all over, with the beginnings of the palest red rainbow stripe down its side. Surviving to the returning adult stage must have been against million to one odds.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Oh, I'm sorry about that. I didn't meant to drop them. But they are so slimy and slippery. They are hard to hang on to. I guess I dropped a few.

The fish it was following stopped too fast......also known as a Brown Nose with a depth perception problem.

It's Ok Parker. As you can see they lived to be caught again.

FUN5...you didn't just bring up boneless browns again did you?

Dam two headed, two mouthed, albino, concrete slamin fisheys!
Sounds likes there on steroids to me.


RR

Not sure how reliable this is but I was once told by a biologist down in Olympia that this is actually hereditary in some hatchery fish. The reason he gave me was that these fish grow up the first part of their lives feeding on the surface. If you compare a common hatchery and wild fish you may notice a slight difference in the protusion of the lower jaw. This is caused by surface feeding as there mouths adapt to the feeding conditions.
Looks like a hooked nosed steelhead.

Actually, this "two mouth syndrom" is much more common than one would expect.
Every September on the Carbon, hundreds if not thousand of "Two Mouth Kings are dragged up onto the rocks by their "alternate mouth". That's the one just aft of the Anal Fin.
Science has yet to explain the phenomena.
G

problems with the feed or the fish converting feed can also cause deformities.....

Could it be that, like humans, that there can be harelip fish? Or maybe some mad scientist genetically manipulated these fish with parrot genes?