On the reports page and on this forum I've seen folks mention the color of the trouts meat. I've heard all kinds of 'scientific' explanations of why some are pink and some are white, but I still can't explain it myself for 100% certaintly.

Well, whatever you think is the reason, keep this in mind - WDFW is planting trout (mainly triploids I think) with pink dye added so the meat is pink. Hmmm... What's next, adding garlic and butter flavor?

And I seem to remember a rather hot debate started by the thoughts that the trips are being wasted by power bait fishermen..what a joke!

I'm pretty sure the pink meat that the triploids have is from being fed shrimp shells and not from dye. The reason behind this is that the state has found more people would rather eat the pink meat than the white.

A trout that has pink meat could very well have naturally pink meat if it has survived in a lake from smolt stage. For instance, a trout from Lake Washington will definetly have pink meat because WDFW does not stock Lake WA.

I'm not suggesting that trout don't have naturally pink meat at some point in their lives.

I was just noticing that on the WDFW weekly trout stocking reports, that many of the plants have a note next to them stating: 'these fish were fed pigmneted feed'.

I remember Stacie mentioning this once as well. Seems some folks get so caught up with the colork, that even though the color is the only difference, they still think the pink meat tastes better....

This is true. People do get caught up with the color of meat. I wonder why WDFW plays around with pigmenting fish any way?
I think it is nice to know if the fish you caught was freshly stocked (gray meat) or the fish has been in the lake for a while (pink meat).

Just my thoughts on the topic.

Given a choice of flesh color, I would choose pink over pale every time. There is a definate taste difference between the two colors.You can usually tell the difference between fresh stockers and fish that have been in the lake awhile, by the condition of the fishes fins and tail. I'm not apposed to eating stockers, but feeding them pigmented food wont change the way they taste, that will be a product of eating natural foods for a few weeks.

I think WDFW should start doing what the ketchup company is doing - lets see all different colored meat. Purple would be appropriate (go Huskies), green, orange, blue, all the colors of the rainbow. I'll bet that'll encourage catch and release.

Good idea Mike! You should cc: Stacey.

Rcl187 is exactly right. They just put some shrimp in their food and it changes the color of the meat.

~ Dr Pepper

From what I've read over the years, the reason salmonids have their orange colored flesh is because of the carotene found in their forage. If you consider that, after a trout gets over 12 inches they'll shift their emphasis to larger prey than the insects they grew up on, their flesh will tend to be whiter. It's the carotene in the shells of aquatic bugs that makes the smaller fish orange. At the sametime, in places where fish have an ample source of freshwater shrimp--aka "scuds"--their flesh will be more orange than white. If you notice, sockeye salmon have the deepest colored flesh of all the salmonids. This is because they graze on small things like krill--very small shrimp. Again, a good source of carotene. However, a salmon like chum is more strictly a predator, thus has a whiter, less tastey flesh. So, in the end, what makes a flamingo pink is the same thing that makes the flesh of a trout orange.

What you say is all well and good but what about the king salmon from thre Fraiser river system. That meat is white.

I was with ya until you mentioned the eating habbits of the chum salmon. My understanding is that they are mainly plankton eaters, with a few crustaceans and squid thrown in. I think their diet is very similar to pink salmon and sockeye. Kings and cohos feed mostly on bait fish.

Most of the small wild trout I've caught and ate from small streams have had white meat. Same with those fish in the alpine lakes.

When I lived on a small sw washinton river, I used to catch and eat lots of trout that had only white meat. Then when the bigger sea run cutts came in, they would tend to have pink meat.

Jim - here is some info I found about white chinook: "White chinook essentially the same as the more common red chinook. The primary difference being that the whites have a genetic code that does not produce the red pigment found in most salmon". I've also heard the meat is more oily, deteriorates fast, and not as good eating.

Hmm. A lot of holes shot through my theory. All I can say is that there is a lot of carotene in shrimp--krill being a plankton-sized form of shrimp--as well as freshwater shrimp like scuds. Certainly, I've seen that Lone Lake, which has lots of chironomids, does produce trout with colored flesh, as well as deep red stripes. Whether or not it also has scuds is something I cannot attest to. Beyond this, I have to admit that I must defer to a marine biologist for a definitive answer. Still, wouldn't you think that the hatcheries' use of shrimp shells to deepen the color of their trout would be some proof of the role of carotene in the color of salmonids' flesh?

I caught one white king in Washington waters a few years ago(I think it was one life time). That was the best tasting Salmon I ever baked. It was a small one 28lbs.

I think both sides are right, ie, the side arguing the pinkness comes from the feed and the side that argues it's genetic.
In Brook trout it's definately genetic and of many brook trout I've eaten over the years the only ones I ever found with whitish or very light pink meat were spawners in poor condition. I've fished them in lakes where the primary foodsource was leeches and other lakes where it's scuds and others where it's chiornomids and the meat is still always Pink.

In Lahontin cutts it seems to me that only Maiden fish (pre spawn) that have been feeding heavily on scuds ever develope any pinkness or flavorfull meat. The larger fish will be white meated and bland tasting regardless of what their feeding on and most of the smaller ones are too.

Among the salmon group it's even more confusing. In Alaska the" Pink" Salmon by the time they return to the vicinity of their stream are not very "Pink" anymore and taste very bland, whereas most of those occasionally caught at sea are quite pink and tasty.
The Chinook salmon exhibits both types Pink/rich and white/bland whether at sea or at stream mouth ready to spawn in a quite confusing manner.

As for the F&G practice of adding pigment to the feed to make our trout a more desireable slab of pink meat, I can only say this is stupidity and waste to the highest degree and supports my argument that F&G supports and encourages a "meat fishing" mentality at the expense of the SPORT fishing is supposed to be.
Now get out there and stock up that freezer guys. They'll turn back to white by next year.

The pink or red flesh color in salmon, trout, and char come from their diet. As noted earlier in the thread, the pigment is from carotenoids found in some fish diets. In high lakes the red flesh color typically either comes from zooplankton (red copepods, a tiny crustacean), or scuds (freshwater shrimp). Fish that target insects will have white flesh. Often you will find some fish with white and some with pink flesh from the same lake.

Given a diet free of carotenoids salmon will also have white flesh. They have to add carotenoids to the feed of farmed salmon to give them the pink color that consumers demand.

Fishnfella, brook trout definitely have white flesh unless they get the caratenoids in their diet. I've got a nice photo of two brookies side by side: one with white flesh, the other pink. They aren't able to utilize the copepods as readily as rainbow so in high lakes they will typically have white flesh while rainbow will, more frequently, have pink flesh because they can, with their more closely spaced gill rakers, more efficiently feed on zooplankton.

Brian