Yellow-belly spotted native cutthroats ?

Newer to the forum, an old geezer (almost) to fishing-have my 40 years in chasing fish.

I tried to search, do you guys recall catching 20 inch plus heavy spotted, yellowbelly cutthroats in ponds and sloughs "back in the day"?

I have talked to some of the younger generation about fish I caught in my youth and they think I am wacky. I know we had leopard cutthroat on the coast of WA and I moved away and have been home and have not encountered any in the past few years.

Seems I remember all the local sporting good stores-like Failor's in Aberdeen, or hardware stores Forks, had pics or actually taxidermy dark 5 pound cutthroat mounted-anyone remember that?

Did they quit planting the small ponds and lakes I caught them in?
Am I just plain losing it?

Thanks in advance

They may have planted those ponds or they were simply the wild cutthroat that lived there. A lot has changed over the years, including a lot of lost habitat. The stream may still be there, the pond may still be there, but it has changed so that it won't support the fish. And, 40 years of catch and kill adds up.

thanks carcassman, perhaps you are right-just too much pressure over the years and loss of habitat sealed the deal

they were really, really pretty fish

thanks!

The coastal cutts that lived their entire lives in places like beaver ponds certainly took on different coloring from what I remember. I can recall catching some that had almost brown backs with yellowish / orange bellies. This of course was years ago.

Here are some cutthroat pictures.
The first three pictures are some saltwater cutthroat from the past few years that show the variation in colors. You can see the yellow color forming on the lower jaw and belly in the second picture.
The last picture is from a stream that does have beaver ponds on it.
SF

SF -
Love those cutthroat that those big yellow spots along their bellies.

Osprey-
A major change from years ago is the invasion of bass in many of the larger/more permanent ponds. The result is fewer cutthroat with those large toads of years gone much rarer.

Curt

Very good looking fish, Stonefish-thanks for posting.
I see some of the color getting there. Yes, the beaverpond fish were spotted all over and had a brown back and yellow sides..and sometimes had reddish fins too. I wish I had a camera with me back in the day all the time. Some fish were into the lower 20"'s and heavy.
trying to figure out how to add a pic on here of one that shows a small example.

Great stuff !
Thanks

Thank you, Smalma, for the information.

Some of the fish did have one or up to several yellow spots on the belly or jaw, weird stuff.

Good stuff !

Get one of the grandkids to help you post some, love to see your old beaver pond cutt pics.


c/22

+1


Nice fish, Stone!

caught and released them like hell in high school on McLane creek in Thurston county. that was when it was open but that was 16 years ago.

I hear ya-darn smart kids these days !
computer savvy as heck

used to fish for them at night with bullhead meat as bait as a kid. the big yellow bellies came out at night to feed in the shallow ripples. if i remember right 22 inchs was the biggest i caught. also caught them at night up in the still waters of the satsop. above matlock

Yes, night fishing for trout here or in E WA is a favorite of mine as well

While in grad school one of my jobs was to release the day's collection of chum fry, They were held all day in big circular tub (multi-thousands) and the drained out a 4" pipe. After dark. Shined a flashlight on the outfall once and there was a cutthroat, whose head just fit, filter-feeding on the stream of fry as they came out. We also tossed the cutts coho smolts which they gobbled down.

pretty stinkin cool. carcassman. I have caught a lot of fish that are bigger and fight a lot better, but a 14 + inch sea run cutthroat is still my favorite.

When God was creating fish She made the cutthroat (all the varieties), stepped back, and said "That's as good as I can do".

I'll take a wild cutthroat of any size and variety over just about any other fish. A male in spawning colors is the cherry on the sundae.

osprey,
Here is a picture I found of a cutthroat my buddy caught out of the salt that is starting to display some of the orange belly you mentioned.




Here is a website you might enjoy. They are starting to catch some of the previously tagged cutthroat they are studying.
http://www.coastalcutthroatcoalition.com/
Enjoy
SF

Here's a Purdy one from way up high on a local river.

Very cool! Yes, it is hard to get a look at spawning colors as the fish spawn during closed seasons mostly and have always looked through government/fisheries literature for pics of full-on spawners and have come up empty.
I have seen some Cowlitz Cutthroat with a pretty good amount of red on the bellies.
Truly amazing fish and see you guys too have the same admiration for their beauty !

I did run across the coalition a month or so back-good, good stuff !

That is a beauty! Looks like perhaps a post spawn Sea Run maybe?
Although, I have never seen a very fat stream resident so maybe never tasted salt? Great fish. Thanks for sharing

Love the big jaws of a Cutt.

Love our cutthroat-
Thanks for posting pics, guys!

Neat thread. I'm not always positive whether I've caught a resident or a sea-run, but my local cricks host both. I typically catch a couple 20+ fish each season, and I think those have all been residents. I have caught a 23" SRC in the salt, and it looked like a small steelhead (shape-wise). That's why I've usually guessed the more slender ones I catch are SRCs. I could very easily be wrong. Either way, big cutts are awesome.

I got a couple up high on a local river today. Not much size 12" and 14". Missed a BIG one on an orange madamX dry. The big one i missed had a yellow belly. Must have been sea runs. All the same little stretch of water next to a downed tree. I always thought this was a sea run. Spots all the way to the pectoral fins and slender. free picture upload

Dood! That is screen saver material right there!

Nice fish posts !!

Yellow bellys

What type of cutt is that Chromer?

Westslopes take on that redish orange belly as well. Here is one from the upper Yakima.
SF

Brian, PM sent.

Strawberry cutt

Intense headshot, apex cuttie.

It seems to me that most pics of SRCs from the sound (and the few that I have caught) seem to retain their spots and throat slash a lot more than the ones (which I have a lot more experience) on the coast which enter their streams (no matter their size) generally dime bright with a throat slash that is very faded.

I hear lots of talk of 20" + SRCs but have seen very few and caught or lost even less. Years ago I saw a 23" that a guy caught. Pictures? Some of the pics above don't qualify as SRCs.

Heres a 15" coastal SRC I caught a couple years ago:

[img:left][/img]

I think the coloration of the anadromous life form of coastal cutthroat in Puget Sound and Hood Canal really depends on the time of year.
Many of the fish we catch in the salt in late spring into say June are chrome bright and you can't see the jaw slashes at all.
Catch those same fish in the salt in December and they'll look totally different, with many displaying golden hues, very noticeable spots and much more pronounce jaw slashes.

Catching any coastal cutthroat over 20" is something to celebrate. I've fished for them a long time and have only one that I've actually measure that exceeded the 20" mark. I do have a few that haunt me though that I've seen, including two that I've lost in the past few years. The fact I know they are there keeps me coming back.
SF

A lesson learned. The first year we were trapping a stream we got a dime-bright fish that had not many spots and no color but silver. ID'd it as a steelhead jack. Fortunately, we tagged it. Came downstream as a SRCT female kelt. We saw her a few more years; she even spent the summer in a local lake. After that first return she was dark colored. Don't think we ever got any others that were that bright.

My experience has been newly arrived coastal SRC's, mid-summer/Fall, tend to be pretty silvery with faint spots and a barely noticeable orange jaw slash. As they stage in their river from late Fall/Winter/early Spring The more vivid colors come out. This is when they become eye candy IMO.

Here's one from a few winters ago caught while chasing wild winter steel. It's my biggest at an estimated 18-19" and also sports those wicked leopard spots.

Beautiful cutthroat Eric.
SF

Really pretty fish keep being posted ! Leopard Cutts..wow !
The lower coastal tidewater fish I see..and on the western peninsula, are almost all silver and fat coming in or silver and skinny going out (kelt).

I know the fish coloring can change to mimic their water and anything glacial really has bland silver coloring and the small streams with darker water and shade-and beaver ponds, can produce some really surprising eye-catching colors.

Love the variety within the watersheds!

A friend and I used to catch really big src's from the little creeks at the south end of Hood Canal, and a few out of the Skok. We'd fish nightcrawlers on opening day, and it was typical to get at least one in excess of 20" if we worked all the creeks in all the sweet spots.

I can think of at least a half dozen fish my friend had pics of that were in the 23-24" range. But he died about 10 years ago, and I have no idea where those photos are now. He also had photos of rainbows he'd catch out of Island Lake in Shelton that people would not fuckin' believe. I've had plenty of people scoff at this - and I suppose I don't blame them. I remember the first time I fished those creeks with my friend. He caught a 22 incher, and I caught 2 that were just under 20". I couldn't believe that frogwater could have fish like that. His brother almost disowned him for taking me, but we fished every opening day from that point on, while his brother lost the commitment to get off work and get up early. We caught fish all day, but every toad was caught before it was all the way light.

In my experience, the big SRC's were typically very silvery with faint spots. A few of them had the full blown spots like the one in Eric's photo. The yellow bellied cutts were the one we used to catch in the beaver ponds around Shelton. You can still see a couple of those ponds right by 101 as you go past Wallace Kneeland Blvd on your way north - that was before the freeway went in. We'd catch them in the Deckerville swamp area of the Satsop, too. I don't know if the Satsop fish were SRC's or if they stayed in the Satsop's stillwater area, but those fish typically had the fatter yellow bellies than the SRC's we'd catch of the Hood Canal creeks.

I love cutties because they're beautiful fish, and you can catch them all over the place. The smaller to medium sized ones are aggressive biters, and fight really well. The big fish are at least as challenging as a steelhead to catch, and because of the small, brush filled creeks we fished for them in, landing one was a huge challenge. I miss fishing with my friend on opening day for those awesome fish.

It bums me out that we killed so many of those fish. We were kids, and didn't realize the impact we probably had. We'd go out, kill a few, and take them home and eat them for dinner.

I haven't fished those creeks since they banned bait, but I get the feeling that a fly guy could have pretty good luck out there with a sculpin pattern fished on the bottom. Every single big cutty we caught out there had its belly stuffed with little sculpins. I'm not sure if they stuffed on them in the salt and then blazed upstream, or if they we eating them in the creeks, but they had a taste for sculpin.

Great thread - and thanks for sharing the photos. Unfortunately, back when I was catching SRC's on a regular basis, there was no such thing as a cell phone or digital camera, and I was too broke to afford a SLR.

I might have to buy a fly rod, and start fishing them in the salt. It sounds like cutty fishing in the south sound can be pretty good - and I need to get out there and reconnect. Can that sh!t be done with a spin rod, or will everyone clown me and make me feel bad about myself?



Jesus - I was rambling there. IPA

Dan,
I think anyone that has fished for searun cutts for a long time regrets some of the big fish we harvested. That was a different time and we didn't know any better.
The south sound and the canal provide the best searun cutthroat fishing in my opinion.
I see a number of anglers each year having success with light spinning rods tossing spinners and spoons with single barbless hooks.
Searun cutt fishing has help fill the void for me in regards to lackluster local steelhead fishing or blown out rivers.
You mentioned sculpins. This pattern has worked very well for me twitched across the bottom. Sculpins and polychaete worms have accounted for a lot of my larger salty cutts recently.
SF

That's a great looking fly.

The fish in the bellies of these cutts were partially digested, but they always made me think of a deer hair fly with a smooth body back - like the body in your pic, except without the color and a rounder head,

What marine areas are you typically fishing, stoney?

Dan,
I generally fish cutts in the salt in MA 12 and 13.....searun central.
Some might enjoy reading this study in regards to the diet of coastal cutthroat.
Chum play a huge roll in southern cutthroat.
SF

http://docs.streamnetlibrary.org/CoastalCutthroatData/sn600219.pdf

tl;dr probably a new cookie recipe.

A couple of years ago I took my left over herring from beach fishing for coho with me to Meadowdale Park(Screw that hike) and caught 3 nice SRC's in short order with the bobber herring deal while a couple of fly guys(not in the stonefish class) got zero.

Beautiful creatures............

Each one is unique in its own special way.

Great looking cutts Steeldrifter.
SF

I love this thread. Night fishing yellow bellies is one of my favorite things in the world. I've caught only 1 over 20". I've lost a couple that were bigger, and saw one once on the upper satsop while snorkeling that nearly made me mess my shorts. It keeps me going back summer after summer. The next one I get I'm going to have mounted, they are so beautiful and much cheaper to do than a steelhead. A friend of mine has a 24" 3-4 pound yellow belly mounted he got a few years ago in my local haunts. They're there still, just much harder to come by. I wish I was born 50 years ago when 25" we're common in the " still waters".

I'd be curious to talk to any local taxidermist who has 25+ years in locally to see what they have encountered -especially any old timer taxidermist back 40+ years.

Anything in the 23-24" range is such a rarity from what I have gathered.

I was born just over 50 years ago and as a kid larger fish than 20" were not very common so no one missed out on too much-perhaps 75 years ago they did. Maybe some lacustrine populations got thinned out early and became extinct in some of the rivers-who knows.

Smalma probably put it best, that habitat that produced those fish became Largemouth Bass water or was degraded to where the fishery is now limited. I remember way more beaverponds too as a kid. Trapping took care of far too many beavers too.

The neatest colored fish I caught were from sloughs that were murky and slow and barely anything much than a slow canal. The big fish were most likely sea-runs that were feeding and getting ready to spawn I suppose-not sure. There was no gravel so perhaps they were just on feeding runs killing time. There were alot of juvenile peamouth and sucker-types of fish by the thousands stuck in those canals.

I have read of Bull Trout in Grays Harbor streams that were once somewhat plentiful that were there only to feed and not spawn-an interesting fish I'd love to more about historically. I have fished Grays Harbor streams for 30+ years and never once caught a Dolly/Bull in those waters.

When I was 14 years old was when I got the biggest cutt of my life. Fishing off the beach at my uncles house on the west side of raft island back in June of 1999. Casting a krocodile spoon off the beach with 6lb test. Fish hit hard and took tons of line and the entire time I thought I was fighting an early coho. Brought it to the beach and it measured 23.5 inches. I didn't get any pictures but it was bright and silvery with a tinge of yellow and green.


Streamer

In GH the cuts have recovered some but it is different as well just different where you find them. The thing on cuts here is that they took a habitat hit big time but weathered it in the old days. Modern timber harvest played a role and the biggest not being what one would think. The roads did and do damage but the greatest impact was that the roads created access for trapping beaver. So areas once not worth the walk & time for a trapper now were. Add to it the thing that beaver just love culverts and I have had to remove dams at the mouth of a 8 ft culvert so they have to be removed. Weyco had a guy that would use 4 in woven wire and metal fence post to build a fence away from the mouth of the pipe after trapping was limited and it worked mostly as the beaver uses the fence as its anchor for the dam.

We all like to blame habitat destruction and the picture of devastation jumps out but many times it is not that dramatic but rather death by a thousand wounds. Beaver ponds are critical to both trout and Coho and can be a real pain for anyone from a home owner to farmers. As my boss once said " they work for food, don't ask for a raise, and do not have a union " Beaver ponds are a critical link to the health of many fish and wildlife species. No ponds dimished watershed health for everything from fish to birds just plain everything.

The wolf restoration in Yellowstone has allowed the beavers to recover and they are creating ponds and such to the benefit of the fish and ecosystem.

In eastern Oregon they are trying artificial beaver dams (in hopes of helping the beavers) in some smaller streams. With the beavers and their dams the streams don't downcut as much, sediment is retained, riparian shade returns and the water table in the surrounding floodplain rises which the sub irrigates the pastures.

Good info on the beavers, guys.
I see Beaver in the larger rivers and then in sloughs, but do not come across as many in the smaller streams as I did in my youth.

It is odd how wildlife changes in different time periods.
In coastal WA, we had a ton of skunks as a kid, very few Raccoons, an no Opossums..
now it is possums and Raccoons-Skunks are rare. Even Porcupine seem to have come from nowhere to be seen often as roadkill.

Nutria are more common than Muskrat.

Osprey nested in trees and it is now 95+% artificial platform, and Bald Eagles and Peregrines are commonplace-nice post DDT recovery.

Canada Geese were not in anywhere near the numbers they are now, but in my area, ducks are far less common. No Wood Ducks in a couple of decades.

The fish-as we old(er) timers know, are a total different ballgame as well. On the lower Chehalis (pre-1980's), there were carcasses of huge kings in the Fall, and upper Quinault was full of Bald Eagles feeding on carcasses in feb/march. Not much anymore.

The lack of carcasses feeding the entire stream ecosystem is something that was finally fully realized-bringing small "repair" by bringing dead hatchery fish and dumping them in some small streams is a start, but that has to be something that is impossible to fix for the big picture where there are little fish population numbers so no carcasses to be harvested. How can streams be starved of food and be expected to revive yearly?

So back to the great comments by RIVRGUY and CARCASSMAN, YES! Alot more than one or two things to blame here.

It takes a functioning ecosystem for the beavers to do their thing.


Here in western Washington man has altered the landscape so that in many areas the beaver can not find adequate food supply. They feed on the bark and inner bark of trees such as aspen, cottonwood, alder, willow, etc. and not on the conifers that are the base of the monoculture that is typical of industrial timber lands.

Historically the bulk largest coastal cutthroat were non-anadromous fish. Lowland lakes with spawning tributaries, oxbow sloughs and side channels and beaver ponds where the core of coastal cutthroat habitats. Prior to the introduction of exotic species in those habitats and land use changes many of those types of habitats would produce coastal cutthroat in excess of 24 inches (largest I ever saw was a 30 inch fish) with a few giants in excess of 10#s. The number of waters today that are capable of consistently producing such fish has been greatly reduced over the last 50 years.

Curt

Curt, great info. I am curious, since I never saw any of the really, really big beaverpond cutthroat or lake cutthroat, were they deep bellied-rounded like a big brook trout can get-or just long and healthy? I guess trying to wrap my head around a high 20-s to 30" fish is tough. Even the spotting pattern must have been amazing.

I can imagine a beaver pond fish-like a lake fish, would not need to burn alot of calories in still water and being piscivorous, would be getting alot of meals in one big bite? I remember even a 12 inch beaver pond trout would have sculpins inside so they started to eat fish early.
Now I think of it, I did see one of the monster Cutts in the 70's briefly. The 6-7 pound coastal cutthroat I saw-without knowing fully where it came from, is now a ghost fish. No pics, it seemed like a Brown Trout (fully Cutt, for sure) in shape-sort of, a deflategate football, and a brute! Long jaws, thick tail and arched back.
Spotted belly. Those odd yellow spots, too.

Seems like another species "lost" not genetically, but topographically/environmentally? so there is hope I suppose

Osprey -
The condition of those large cutthroat dependent on the time of year. The fish from late winter/spring were typically kelts and often on the skinny side. Late summer/fall/early winter were in better conditions as with most coastal cutthroat tended to be less robust than brook trout.

The very largest fish came from large lakes with a substantial forage base. The biggest I saw came from Lake Whatcom. The biggest from beaver ponds that I personally saw was about 6# and saw pictures of larger fish. As you would expect the beaver pond fish were typically heavy spotted and colored. The large lake fish were more silver in coloration except at spawning time and the immature fish often had no or faint throat slashes.

Curt

Good info, Curt. Amazing to think of the fish in the old days that swam the waters. If conditions stayed anywhere near the same for 100's or 1000's of years, there probably were some mind-bending fish in our waters we never had a chance to ponder.


A nice cutthroat

** not my fish

another spotted yellowbelly
*not my pic

This is one of the cooler threads I've read in a while. I forgot the details, but my dad's old fishing buddy caught a 15? Pound cutthroat out of lake Stevens. I think the picture is still hanging in Greg's. Probably over 15 years ago by now though.
I lost one in a creek 2 years ago that looked about 3 pounds or better, crystal clear water. That was a heart breaker.

wow! what a beautiful fish.

From The Olympian- reportedly from a south sound river, a cutthroat from the 1950's or 60's.

Looks to be in that 6 pound range I am guessing.

Although I have never seen a really big Cutthroat that spotting pattern looks awfully Rainbow to me.

Having said that, I was at a meeting of bios once and somebody ran a series of slides for us to ID. Every fish that looked like a Coastal Cutt was a genetic rainbow and every one that looked like a rainbow was a genetic Cutthroat. So, I know looks can be deceiving.

I mean, some politicians look human........

I thought the same too, somewhat-I was just passing along what someone had sent me some time back and the info involved.
The kype looks more rainbow-ish..the maxillary is long..cutthroat-like, Spotting is a tough one.and-yep, alot of the scientist think most any big cutthroat we might run into is likely a hybrid between a coastal rainbow and a cutthroat.

It is a tough call

I have long thought that many of the exceptional large sea-run cutthroat I have seen in PS rivers were rainbow (steelhead)/cutthroat hybrids.

That said the very large cutthroat that dwell in lakes and larger beaver ponds look to be pure cutthroat.

On several occasions following very large floods I have seen exceptionally large cutthroat caught during winter steelhead seasons. I every case there has been an upstream reservoir in the system and I suspect that those fish were flushed from those reservoir. The fish consistently looked more like lake fish (heavy body) than the sleeker sea-runs.

Curt

Redband (generally Inland) rainbows also have those under the jaw colors. More yellow/orange than red but they are there. So, if somebody thinks that any color down there would make a cuttie might miss one once in while.

Used to catch a lot of fish like that in the Sammamish slough. Don't know if they were a hybrid of some sort but they were beautiful fish. It's not uncommon to catch 5+ lb fish in Lk Washington every winter and I always thought they spawned in the slough in the spring since the males looked just like that fish.

Funny you should mention the Lake WA system. That was one of the places where genetic rainbows look like cutts or vice-versa. I forget, but it did cause a stir in WDFW when they found that.

There are both lacustrine rainbow and cutthroat in the system, though. Safer to stay in the lake than to go to sea.

Awesome fish and pics guys, there are very cool little creatures for sure.

But to get back into the system they need to navigate the locks with pinnipeds and then the warm temps in the Ship Canal. Environmental and ecological conditions may keep them in the lake.