riverhunter
5/8/2018 12:13:51 PMThis Martha lake also gets stocked with cutthroat although this looks different then most cutthroat I have caught
Maltby
5/8/2018 12:44:23 PMI thought maybe cutthroat too at first butI looked for the orange coloring under the throat and it was white.
riverhunter
5/8/2018 6:52:04 PMNot all cutthroat get the red slash although most do. Biggest thing to look for is the absence of the redish/pinkish line running across the lateral. Still this fish looks different then most trout I’ve caught. Looks like some kind of hybrid. Doubt it is a brown but man sure has me scratching my head
Maltby
5/8/2018 6:58:25 PMAfter looking at pictures of juvenile brown trout on the internet I’m leaning toward brown trout. I talked to a fellow fisherman at the launch and he said he has caught two like that this spring. I’m going to contact WDFW at Mill Creek and see what they say,
jimfishes2
5/9/2018 8:08:07 AMThat is a Brown. Very interesting! I caught an 11 pound Brown in that lake a couple years ago, fly fishing deep with a bead head Wooly Bugger. I showed the photos to the WDFW folks there in Mill Creek and they said it was the largest Brown ever taken from Martha Lake. They thought it was interesting since they had not planted any Browns there for over 10 years. She was full of eggs, but they didn't think there was any place for Browns to spawn there. Looks like there may be spawning after all. By the way, that was one heck of a fight!
jimfishes2
5/9/2018 8:22:41 AMIf you look at the identification pictures on page 46 of the fishing regulations you will see that that they can have a forked tail, though my fish had a pretty square tail. BTW, I just looked up my photos and I caught that fish on July 2, 2014, so it was more than a couple years ago :-) Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's what this is.
jimfishes2
5/9/2018 8:24:07 AMIf you look at the identification pictures on page 46 of the fishing regulations you will see that that they can have a forked tail, though my fish had a pretty square tail. BTW, I just looked up my photos and I caught that fish on July 2, 2014, so it was more than a couple years ago :-) Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's what this is.
Maltby
5/9/2018 10:40:16 AMWDFW Mill Creek confirmed it is a brown. Pretty cool that there may be a self sustaining population. Next time I’m releasing . Nice catch on your big one.