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[KLX]

I was recently down in arizona and was shown a native trout that is found down there. Has anyone ever caught one of these?

Its called the Apache trout and has the body of a normal rainbow and the head of a monster...

couldnt really get a good shot:

[wonder]

what a hideous creature lol, also never heard of them

[milo]

Looks like a deformity to me. Gila (Apache trout) are not ugly at all.

[cutthroat22]

http://www.az-tu.org/nativefish.html

History of the Gila and Apache Trout

For many years, it was known that a bright yellow species of trout inhabited the tiny streams in the high mountains of Arizona. Early settlers referred to them as "yellow trout." The Gila trout was identified earliest and given its original name, salmo gilae, in 1951. According to Trout Unlimited's Conservation Success website, the Apache trout was described as a separate species by Robert Miller of the University of Michigan in 1972, "when it was considered to be distinct from its closest taxonomic neighbor, the Gila trout." It was given the name salmo apache. New scientific names were given to the fish in 1989, when they became onchorynchus gilae gilae and onchorynchus gilae apache.

[bigblue]

The Bass Pro Shop near Calgary has a huge aquarium (8 feet tall and maybe 20 feet wide) stocked with big and obese steelhead, trout and pike among others.
The sad thing is the steelhead were not only over weight but deformed due to long-term holding in a small aquarium environment with not much current to keep them lean and healthy. Also the temperature likely was higher than ideal as it is normally expensive to refrigerate a fish tank that size sitting in room temperature. I couldn't take a picture as I did not have my camera with me, but some of the large trout there looked like the one posted by KLX. I have kept both fresh water and marine reef tanks for many years and can tell in an instant when things are off in any fish tank.

[IronNoggin]

aYup, something off with that one in the picture.

The Apache trout is similar to the Golden Trout, of which I have caught a few handfuls. Beautiful fish.

Here's the info on the Apache version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_trout

Cheers,
Nog

[F33shFr33k]

I'd eat it!

[243Pete]

Looks like a wolf eels head has been grafted onto a trouts body.

Or maybe this is a side affect of to many pesticides in our water?

[bigblue]

Or maybe this is a side affect of to many pesticides in our water?

I would speculate that the fish became deformed due to prolonged exposure to sub-optimal conditions including water quality, temperature, diet, water current, among others. Cold water species which live in strong currents, like trout and salmon, fare poorly in most aquariums as lowering temp to 15 degrees from room temp and generating strong currents is both capital and energy intensive for small scale poorly funded public/private aquariums. As I have been an avid aquarium keeper for a long time, I always try to visit aquariums when I visit new places and sometimes get appalled by conditions at some public/private aquariums. Latest one was the Bass Pro Shops display aquarium near Calgary which had deformed and obese steelhead and salmon. I would say they were in worse shape than the Apache trout in above pic. 

[speycaster]

Caught a few small Apache trout in NE Arizona, beautiful country where they are found. Was a bit of snow around when I fished for them. None that I caught looked like that one, mind you the biggest was about seven inches.

[Dave]

That photo reminds me of a group of coho I raised years ago at the Cultus Lake Laboratory.  The fish were Chilliwack River stock, reared and kept as experimental bioassay fish used for pesticide toxicity experiments. Anyway, the bioassay concluded; normally the remaining fish would have been euthanized but I decided to keep the 30 or so fish that had not been used in a flow thru trough, but with a difference – they had no natural photoperiod as 11’ of the 12’ trough was covered 24/7 with a light stopping lid.  They were fed minimal rations but lived for seven years.  Yup, seven years.

When I finally had to cull these fish they were about 8 -12” long, ugly as hell and not recognizable as coho but almost identical to the photo, with deformed heads and bodies.

I still wonder how long those fish would have lived if I had continued to feed them

[1son]

Wow that looks strange