Helping with Gill nets at Bear lake

[BearLakeFishGuy]

The "deformed" mac was just that.....a hatchery deformity. The small mac was adipose clipped, therefore indicating it was a triploid fish that was stocked since 2001. So what happened?? When the eggs are treated with 9,500 psi of pressure to induce triploidy (adding a third set of chomosomes) this can cause some defomities. Many of these fish are weeded-out while a the hatchery and not stocked. Others die shortly after stocking since they have a hard time competing with "normal" fish in Mother Nature's cruel world. However, some fish do make it and this one had lordosis... a up/down shifting of the spine causing it to be particularly short for its length and more "bluegill" shaped than lake trout shaped. To have one live to this size is quite rare, but I've seen several others over the years that weren't triploid with the same conditon or even with sculiosis (side to side shifting of the spine). Anyway, the picture was taken to note the uniqueness of this fish. By the way, we tagged and released this particular fish.
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