Broiled Lightning Trout

[Latimeria]

I was planning on mounting the Lightning Trout but took measurements instead to get a reproduction instead.  I filleted the beast, and it looked just like salmon!  I had some Japanese fish bone tweezers that were gifted to me a while ago and used them to make a perfectly boneless filet.

My wife who hates trout was even pretty amazed and excited to try it since it looked just like salmon.



I cooked it the way my wife likes her salmon, and it was 10x better than any store-bought salmon she ever came home from the store with!  A Garlic and herb butter drizzled over the filet with salt, pepper and cut sweet onion.



Too bad every stocker trout don't get fed the good stuff and have red meat.  It makes such a difference, but it's always a roll of the dice.

I kept the head so I can get it moulded for a body if needed, but I really want a fish mount of this baby!

[vdisney]

Looks awesome, excited to see the mount

[jrodda]

Looks delicious. I wonder if they will open the salmon this year, I might be game for a few days of torture on the Sac again.

[Fish Jerk]

If they have red meat, means he's been living in the wild for a long time. The red comes from eating a natural diet. The pellets they feed stocker trout doesn't have the correct organic material for the trout to metabolize and make its meat orange to red. The pellets are designed to maximize growth etc.

Looks delicious btw. That's gonna make a cool mount.

[skrilla]

Wow. Mid to late 90's was the last time I've seen stocker trout with dark meat. Had a few with eggs in them too. I knew they were fresh stockers because we were fishing them 50ft from the truck as it was unloading them.  I want to say they were Nebraska Tailwalkers but I can't confirm.

[Fish Jerk]

I'm sure different hatchery's prob have some different formulas for the food pellets that may have the proper nutrients that trout metabolize into making the red/orange flesh. I've only ever fished trout back in my old home state of PA, but all fresh stockers back then always had white meat. Would occasionally find the random holdover trout hanging with the fresh stockers and these would have the normal orange/red meat. This was mostly stream fishing vs pond/lake fishing.

[Latimeria]

I catch quite a few trout with red meat every year, even just some smaller regular looking stockers so it's probably a high protein feed with keratin and/or shrimp meal that certain lakes stock.  The trout in Santee Lakes usually has red meat fish, and I think they get them from Mt Lassen.  The Idaho ones all seem to have white meat from my experience.

[KogaHead]

Caught a bunch of NE tailwalkers in Lake Mission Viejo.

Dark meat and great to eat, gotta try that recipe.

[Tim524]

That looks so good 

[Latimeria]

Was so goo the first time, that Banana Slug I caught the other day turned out pretty tasty with some lobster and crab cakes!





Sooooo gooood....

[jrodda]

Goooolly, you're eating some prime seafood...