Golden Fresh Water Trout
 

My kind of fishin'

That is a 10" plate those beauties are laying on!

Where did you catch them?

Farm raised?
 

Those fish are fat for this time of year. Small head and large body makes me think hatchery. Am I close? ;)

Wow, those are really nice Golden's - they usually don't get that big...at least not up in the high pan lakes in NorCal.

Richard

This discussion will now move to the Gourmet Gorilla.

I hope you don't ruin them. All we used to do was gut 'em, wash 'em out in the lake or stream, fry 'em in a skillet w/butter, and eat 'em.

Richard :munchin

I think your technique may be incorrect, Richard! :D

Oh no you don't, Chef Penn Sir!

Did you actually catch these fish or not? :munchin

I hear lots of crickets . . . :D

Oh yeah, they're from a hatchery look at the second picture closely. The nets are to keep predatory birds out. Can't bullshit a bullshitter. I started my career in a hatchery. There were a couple of years that CO wasn't hiring game wardens due to budgetary reasons. That is when I got of school and needed work. I made the first class when they started up again. :p

Warren County (NJ) Rod & Gun - Hatchery...you are absolutely correct!

Farm fish - meh...

Richard :munchin

Damned purists! Next thing you tell me is that you caught trout with 550 cord and a safety pin up in the Lincoln National Forest in NM, and fried 'em up in your canteen cup! :D

Poached dammit! Nobody with any sense fries in a canteen cup.:p

The trout does not taste farmed raised. The fish are in ponds feed by a natural spring next to a small stream, I think this water quality has a lot to do with the taste and texture of the fish we cooked (correctly:D) last night.
I have had other fish, particularly Strip Bass, that are farm raised and the flesh is not as supple. Its more elastic, and the taste is bland, not sweet and a bit musky like the golden last evening. I assume this affect is the water quality, and not the meal pellets, or whatever they use as feed.

A side note:NW Warren county is still rural and truly beautiful.

I would agree that the conditions in which the fish were raised will make a difference in the taste and texture. This especially true if there is a source of crustatceans (daphnia, copepods, crayfish, etc.). This is where fish get the pink color to their flesh. Crustacean fats stores contain a xanthin (I don't remember the full name) chemical that is orange/red/pink in color and this color is imparted to the flesh of fish who feed on crustaceans. However, sometimes just the visual is enough.

When working at the hatchery, my supervisor's wife was doing a study for one of her college classes. She decided that she wanted to evalutate the effects of fish feed that had canthaxanthin (a natural pigment) added to it. We separated a pod of fish and they were fed only the pigmented feed. They took up the color quite rapidly and retained it for some time after we quit feeding it. The interesting part of this is that I stocked a local pond with these fish. After a few weeks and two loads of fish having already been stocked, I had some anglers complain when I showed up a third time with my nasty hatchery fish because they had been catching some beautiful wild fish that were way better then what I was bringing. I didn't have the heart to tell them that they were the same fish. ;)

Feed definitely affects the color of some seafood. I worked in a seafood plant where we used farm raised shrimp and wild caught. The wild caught shrimp cooked up to a beautiful pink/red color while the farm raised or white shrimp had little color.