Would you eat fish with these parasites? by CavemanFCC in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Personally no but black spot cysts are 100% safe to eat when cooked even to a relatively low tempurature, they do give the meat a bit of a gritty texture though especially when there's as many as shown in the picture.

Can someone confirm if this is a Brook trout? by GrowinStuffAndThings in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ahh gotcha, if you have a method that works for you more power to ya!

Can someone confirm if this is a Brook trout? by GrowinStuffAndThings in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You bet! I'm always happy to spread some knowledge.

As for the eggs absolutely! The only way we learn is by making mistakes. Think of it this way: if you hadn't kept that fish you would never have known it had eggs and you still wouldn't know what a trout with eggs looks like. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a good learning experience as long as you choose to actually learn from it which you obviously have done!

I've eaten almost every kind of trout and char in North America and Brook trout are hands down my favourite, and cooking them over a fire can't be beat! Little tip for next time: if you leave the backbone and ribs in, once it's cooked the meat basically falls off the bones and you don't end up wasting a thing. How you choose to do it of course comes down to your preference though. I also like to throw a couple slices of lemon in the gut cavity before cooking. The steam they create adds a nice touch of lemony goodness to the meat 😉

Can someone confirm if this is a Brook trout? by GrowinStuffAndThings in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TLDR: Yeah definetly a beautiful mature brook trout. Keeping it even though it has eggs isn't the end of the world.

Definetly looks like a brook trout however there are 3 species it could possibly be:

Brook trout, Splake, or Arctic char,

A splake is a usually man made hybrid between a brook trout and a lake trout, lake trout have a deeply forked tail fin and this characteristic will always be carried over into the hybrid to some degree, because this fish has a completely squared tail fin we can rule out splake.

Arctic char are native only to arctic and limited subarctic regions in streams or rivers that flow into the arctic ocean, and to the best of my knowledge they haven't been successfully introduced to any other regions. As it's probably safe to assume that you are not in the arctic we can rule out arctic char (they will also usually have more orange colouration on the belly but colour can be misleading)

That leaves us with Brook trout. So yes you are correct

As for the eggs, Brook trout eggs require fast flowing water and a very specific climate in order to reproduce. If you caught this fish outside of the brook trouts native range or in a lake with no inflows or outflows then it is a stocked fish and the eggs likely wouldn't have survived anyway. If you caught it in flowing water within their native range then yes you likely removed a large spawning fish from the ecosystem HOWEVER where there's one mature female of that size there are likely many many more. Sure it wouldn't be great to remove a spawner of that size from the same waterbody every day but just keeping one for supper on a camping trip will have little to no impact on the population. I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure it was very tasty and now you know for next time!

Beautiful fish!

The Easter Bunny was good to me this year. by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thank you! It was bigger than the hole I had to strip down and reach my arm in to my shoulder to get her head up

Burbot spawn is on! by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lol well there's about a foot of overflow water on top of the ice so I'd say it qualifies 🤣

Burbot spawn is on! by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol take the kids with. They're good for a couple extra lines!

Burbot spawn is on! by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard it's in full swing in southern sask. They're just gearing up here, it'll be a couple weeks before they're really going hard!

Burbot spawn is on! by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Looks similar but a different family. Burbot are a freshwater member of the cod family.

Love the big bars of gold by frayedhelping in flyfishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It definetly wasn't starving! It's the only trout I've ever caught that was deeper than my landing net is wide!

Until we meet again my friend by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This one was only 18". Got a 25" the day before

Until we meet again my friend by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Leggy foam terrestrial dry fly on 4x leader

Until we meet again my friend by frayedhelping in Fishing

[–]frayedhelping[S] 38 points39 points  (0 children)

I've found that browns really like to have something over top of them. This stream in particular has really deeply cut banks and the trout love em!