Shouldn't the label on that box hat say FULTON ?
He isn't from Fulton... He doesn't have love tattooed on his knuckles in Indian ink !!
Bob if you fish oz Sunday you will clearly see the difference before you even see the fish. Rainbows will have a much redder gill plate. They willfight but not like a steels. Rainbows do that fast short darting around where the steelies will make a run. The bows fight alot like a brown but more towards the surface withe the darting action. If you catch both you will clearly see. I used to think they where hard yo tell apart then this thread got me thinking and last Sunday we went and you could easily tell the difference as soon as the float dropped.
hey Bob i been having some fun and i even got a few new ideas for you to think about Steelhead are an anadromous strain of rainbow trout. That is, they spend most of there life in the ocean or in the Great Lakes and return to tributary streams to spawn. Rainbow trout are the landlocked form, so to speak, as they do not have a tendency to migrate from one body of water to another. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission plants steelhead rather than rainbow trout in the Lake Erie drainage.Identifying SteelheadThere isn't an easy way to tell one from the other, because they are the same species, Oncorhynchus mykiss. If you fish tributaries to the Great Lakes you are catching steelhead. I read some of that on the links that were posted. Good stuff. Steelhead can be separated from similar-looking coho and chinook salmon by looking at the inside of the mouth. The mouth is completely white in the steelhead. In the salmons, the mouth has some gray or black. Steelhead and other deepwater, big-lake rainbows are more silvery than stream fish, with less of a side stripe.Their genetic background traces back to ocean run (migratory) rainbow trout brought here from the Pacific Northwest. Our landlocked rainbows have also come from the West, but probably did not come from ocean running strains.An even bigger debate among steelheaders is the genetic variety or strain of steelhead caught. Some fish come from stock from the Skamania River, maybe you've heard anglers say they catch these steelhead. Often they are more sleek, not as wide at the 'shoulders' but fight like mad.Landlocked rainbows will migrate and take on some color characteristics you will see in steelhead, but don't grow as large.http://www.fish.state.pa.us/pafish/steelhead/id.htmheres more Note that due to the ambiguity in identification, many states consider any rainbow trout caught above a certain size as “steelhead” (typically 16”). Sea-run Redband Trout are also called Steelhead and migrate along some of the same rivers.http://wildtroutstreams.com/index.php/steelhead i have also been reading alot from the state of washington and the univristy we automaticlly consider the steelhead a off shoot of the rainbow when in fact this is backwards the steelhead (being a salmoniod) is the normal! the rainbow is simple the land locked verison ...like alantic salmon vs landlocks .
Adam, don't know if you are onto something but I noted that before when Gillripper1 went with Catch the Drift. However, your analogy has me thinking too. I caught what I thought was a small 15" Rainbow today on the CP. When I told Shane what it did he said it was probably a Steelie. Here's the confusing part and what it did. First, what it did was immediately launched out of the water about 5 times and it did as much of an attempted run as possible. The confusing part is that's what happens in the Pequest River when I catch "Rainbows". They run and they jump. So at this point I'm not really buying the fight ordeal. Maybe if I hooked a bigger one comparable to the 8.5 lb Steelie I landed yesterday I would have a better gauge but right now it's just more confusing. Add to that what JJLeaf noted about what if a fish was recently caught then recaught. That might have an impact on the theory. Fishthefalls123 caught 2 Domestics yesterday on the drift boat, Northwoods said that it was the same exact Domestic both times. Fishthefalls123 did say, however, that the fight was different when compared to his 9.5 lb Steelie. So his analysis would concur with your observations. IMO I'm still not convinced. Maybe if we hit Oz tomorow I'll see for myself.
And I know this is a Steelhead .
bob i'm sorry i didn't get to hook up with you! perhaps next time , good news all seems well just took a long time at the hospital... hop ya knock the spots off them good luck