Brown trout question

[Kevin J Legg]

I have a question concerning the flesh color of the brown trout. Why are some beautiful orange and others a whitish gray? I thought the thinner gold colored ones that had ventured up the rivers had the lighter colored flesh but some of the fat silver footballs also have the lighter flesh while others have the beautiful orange flesh. Any ideas? Does the color effect the flavor of the fish?

[Swingingflies]

My guess is that the more orange belly trout have been eating eggs & the silver ones have been eating more baitfish

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[Kevin J Legg]

But some of the silver ones have orange flesh and others have whitish flesh. But it must be diet related.

[traveling man]

I had 2 browns a couple of weeks ago with different color flesh. I grilled them and could not tell the difference.

[Kevin J Legg]

I smoked some yesterday and couldn't tell the difference either.

[Landshark]

We smoked em yesterday too and couldn't tell the difference.

[Kevin J Legg]

Yum, Did some with dark brown sugar and some with my neighbors dark maple syrup.

[bear]

Reason why the brown trout flesh can be 2 different colors is because the orange ones eat more crustations, flies, crabs, fresh water shrimp, etc. and the ones who are white eat more alwives, smelt, gobbies, etc. When I was young, a very long time ago back in the 70's I used to catch browns in the eavening and night off Webster Pier on crabs. (softshelled the best). Night fishing for big browns is the best. They do feed on baby browns along with other trout. The bigger ones are loners and on full moon nights you can catch some nice ones on crabs. There's usually no difference in taste. It's all how you prefer to cook them. I like to smoke them.

40 years of fishing and I'm still learning.

Bear