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McCloud River Rainbow Trout — Part 2
Images coming soon.
The males are good breeders at 2 years old, but the females rarely produce eggs until the third season.
The number of eggs produced depends upon the age and size of the fish. The maximum from 3-year-old fish, weighing 1/2 to 1 1/2 pounds, is 500 to 800 eggs; from 6-year-old fish, weighing 2 to 4 pounds, it is 2,500 to 3,000 eggs.
The eggs vary in size from 4 1/2 to 5 eggs to the linear inch, the larger fish usually producing the larger eggs.
All that has been said regarding the game qualities of the typical rainbow trout (Salmo irideus) can be said of the rainbow trout of McCloud River. It may lack a little in the wild gameness of typical irideus, but that is made good by its larger size.
There is, however, no comparison between the rainbow in its native California mountain streams and those introduced into eastern waters, where the warmer temperature has enervated them, and where they have grown large and fat and sluggish. In the cold waters of Colorado, however, they have lost none of their wild nature and superb game qualities.
Head 4; depth 3 4/5; eye 5; D. 11; A. 11; scales 20 to 24-145-20, about 65 before the dorsal. Body comparatively short and deep, compressed, varying considerably, and much more elongate in males than in females; head short, convex, obtusely ridged above; mouth smaller than in most species of trout, the rather broad maxillary scarcely reaching beyond the eye, except in old males; eye larger than in the steelhead; vomerine teeth in 2 irregular series; dorsal fin moderate; caudal fin distinctly though not strongly forked, more deeply incised than in the typical cut-throat. Colour, bluish above, the sides silvery; everywhere above profusely but irregularly spotted, the spots extending on the sides at least to the lateral line, and covering the vertical fins; top of head well spotted; fins usually not red; almost always a light dash of red on throat; much red or rosy on cheek and opercles; belly partly red in males; side with a broad but more or less interrupted red lateral band, brightest in males.