Morning hunt/fish

Don't know much about the toad, but all over the west the same thing happened-stocked everything with brookies, rainbows, and browns. There are some holdout goldens here, up high. Tough to catch a pure cutthroat (can be done, but I'm not saying where on the interwebs, easy enough to find out if anyone really cares), one river I fish a bunch has a lot of cutt-bows. Rainbows and cutthroats spawn at the same time of year so they interbreed.  The Game and Fish here has been sort of systematically poisoning streams to kill off the brookies and rainbows and then restocking with Yellowstone cutthroats, which is what belongs here.

As far as eating I'll take a Rocky Mountain Whitefish over a trout any day. Throw them in the the smoker and you've got some good eats.

Grayfingers, great post, great pics. Hope you have a whole bunch more days like that.

Russ

junglejim, thanks for the offer, probably won't get around to fly fishing this fall. I still have all my tying gear, used to sell flies at the farmer's market as a young teen. I found the tourists liked the weird non-pattern flies I tied for fun more than the standard trout flies. So I would clip friendly dogs for nice hair for streamers and they sold well.

@shotgunner & nowyo, in this part of the state there is no stocking of any trout done on the rivers and streams, as they are self-supporting. Brookies have not been stocked around here in my lifetime, and I am in my mid-fifties. They do stock some of the mountain lakes with cutthroats. The Brook trout is considered to be bad news for native cuts and is poisoned out of as many creeks as possible. In Yellowstone they have used Rotenone to kill off all the Brookies in many streams. They then build a fish barrier to keep only native cutthroat above it. When found in lakes they can get big, Trophy brook trout up to 9 pounds have been taken in Montana waters.

Here is an interesting article. I live near here. Very controversial subject around these parts. I say protect what is needed to preserve the natives, but leave the rest alone. I like Brookies, Browns and 'Bows just fine.

When poisoning is the solution
A victory for an endangered fish, though some environmentalists fought hard to prevent it.
www.hcn.org/wotr/when-poisoning-is-the-solution

Re: whitefish
I think there are several types. In east Idaho when the irrigation canals were shut down for de-mossing, we went to work harvesting common whitefish from the remaining puddles. They were abundant and we always enjoyed the treat. My Dad concocted a wonderful brine for them and smoked them with apple wood. I love all kinds of smoked fish but those were an all-time "best."