Native Fish

Regular contributor Randy King tells us that the native fish you are catching may not be native. "One of the things that I found out is that a lot of the common waterways that people fish do not have native fish in them anymore. Like, California rainbow trout. What you have to do if you want to find this distinct species of rainbow trout, it's called a red band rainbow trout and they are only native to the Columbia Basin, they have been here for the last 50,000 years, you have to get off the beaten path. They are a completely different color, a completely different fighting style from the normal hatchery fish that you catch on the major waterways. Any place that has a lot of fishermen on it, you are catching hatchery fish. In the 1880s, they started aqua culturing them in California. Those are the ones they brought up here not realizing that they were two different species. Last weekend we went up to a place called Jump Creek above the 60 foot canyon that has this huge waterfall in it. We started catching these fish up there in a stream that was 4 feet wide, catching these red band trout. They are beautiful with a different color and they are delicious.