Snuck a day off in when the boss wasn't looking and motored down to the kenai hoping for a couple of chunky rainbows. Caught quite a few trout, but no real jumbos. The dollies on the other hand, were a little on the lardy side.



















One decent rainbow right towards the end of the day. Not a great pic though...it was raining.

Awesome!

Hope to see ya up north my friend.

You mean down south??

beasts!

Nice fish!
I have wanted to catch a dollie in spawning colors down here. Not sure when they change though.

The Kenai dollies are just starting to turn. It seems like by the middle of October they usually have all of their clown make-up on in these parts. Kinda cool looking when they are all colored up and kyped out.

It seems like dollly varden, bull trout, and arctic char all look very similar in their spawning colors. You don't suppose they're closely related, do you?

Sg

Hell, I didn't know there was a difference tween em

Here is an October bull trout I caught in the upper Sky about 7 years ago....post spawn , but I think Alaska char have more intense coloration than our bulls...if this helps at all.......but the ones that Coley posted would eat this one for a quick snack!!

A bull trout (or artic char or Dolly Varden) males in their spawning suits are among the most spectular in the salmonid world and one of my favorite fish.

Since the bull trout of Puget Sound region are fall spawners (peak spawning in October) one finds them in their best spawning colors that time of year or a little before and during the spawning. The vast majority of the bull trout's spawning areas in the region is closed to fishing for them that time of year though it is possible to encounter some late migators before the spawning period that are pretty colored.

While I have never caught any Alaskan char I have caught/seen a few from Washington. Based on the pictures of Alaskan fish I would say the two do color a bit differently. The Washington fish don't have that yellowish jaw tips but during the spawning both have intense white find edges and bright red spots and dark backs though the Washington fish tend to be more blackish than greenish of the Alaskan fish.

The intensity of the spawning color in these char is strongly influence by the dominance of the fish. The more dominant the male the more highly colored the fish will be. For this reason the largest males are usually the most highly colored.

It might also be of interest to know that the fish can change how brightly they are colored very quickly. In a situation where there are multiple males the most dominate fish will be the most highly colored. If that dominance changes for some reason the previous dominate male's color will fade quickly while the new dominate male color will intensify. This flip in coloration can occur in less than 5 minutes.

Tight lines
Curt

Wow. Very interesting. Thanks for the biology lesson!

Chum really change fast. A dominant male will have the vertical bars while the females and least dominant males will have the horizontal bar.

In experiments, a dominant male was harrassed by a human; I think he hit him with a broom handle, as the story goes. He immediately changed pattern from dominat male to female.

That sounds strangely similar to my marriage?

All except the dominant part that is.

Nothing like a broom handle to change dominance. Are we talking about char still?

Sg

I caught this guy late July last year. Is it a Bull trout or a Dolly? It was way up the SF of the Stilly. There is a lot of confusing information about what is what on the West side.

Bull trout!

Genetic sampling of the Puget Sound anadromous char has shown they all to be bull trout. It was very confusing early on as this region is the only area that the bull trout can be anadromous while those anadromous char of north BC and SE Alaska are Dolly Varden.

Surprising even though the two fish look very similar (virtually impossible to tell apart visually) there are significant genetic differences between teh two which indicates that they may not be bas closely related as one would have thought.

Tight lines
Curt

There is some speculaton that the bull trout is more closely related to the Asian white-spotted char than to Dolly Varden or Arctic char. Dolly Varden do occur as far south of Washington state but are restricted to small, high-elevation tributaries in the Cascades and Olympics, usually above permanent barriers to anadromous fish and, as one would imagine, never achieve any significant size.

Preston, is that the same as the Kundzja (sp?) char of Kamchatka, which I believe is either closely related to, or is the same species as, the Iwana char of Japan? I've caught quite a few in Japan and they are tasty fish, roasted yakisakana style on sticks over a campfire....

Mingo,
According to Behnke, "The only other two char with the bull trout's karyotype of 100 arms are the white-spotted char (Salvelinus leucomaenis) of the far east and the "stone char" of Kamchatka (the proper scientific name of the "stone char" is unresolved). Thus the probable closest relationships of bull trout are with Far Eastern species, rather than with Dolly Varden and Arctic char." I don't know about the common names (always a source of confusion) but it sounds like you've nailed it.