Rainbow Trout - A Biology

[Ron Clay]

It might be a good idea to point out that the rainbow trout generally speaking is more catholic in its diet than the brown trout. Brown trout have a tendency to become exclusively fish eaters when they get to say about 2 lbs in weight, although the small wild brown trout of streams and hill lochs can stay insect eaters all their lives.

But where there is a plethora of suitably sized small fish, including their own kind, a brown trout can reach very large sizes. They are actually more aggressive then pike, yet these big wild browns are magnificent fish and well worth pursuing.

[Tommy Ruffe]

The small reservoir that I fish, near Sheffield, is stocked predominantly with rainbows. It is also overrun with coarse fish fry, notably rudd and roach. The rainbows are often caught, throughout the season ‘out of condition’ and do not appear to feed on this plethora of food.

Is there a size at which rainbows will turn to fry feeding? I would have thought they would have been far more aggressive. :

[williegilwilliams]

Wow nice. . . this is cool information to be gathered, thanks for this thread. ;-)

Willie;-)

[geejayy]

i often used to catch both rainbows and browns when they would mug my pike deadbaits fished sink and draw, spin fishing for the pike in my waters was pretty pointless with small lures and even with the big 30grm tobys i'd have to keep an eye out to see what was following.

[fishingcanada]

thanks for the information, waiting for another post about this kind of species. Nice job

[gordon quill]

Good information on rainbows smoothhound. your idea of large browns is quite informative although an elderly coleague of mine would beg to differ having caught a lot of large browns on number 14 flies.
last years best was 13lb on a black spider he is over 80yrs and stalks the big fish to see where they are feeding on the Lochs.
It just shows how fishing can be strange