big rainbows and little browns?

[Eskimo]

I guess you could use those runts for bait.

[bigfishy]

The second brown def wild, but what makes you think the pic next to the rainbow is a stockie.....Other that the fact that it looks a little thin, the coloration and fin development look good to me.....If it is a stockie , which is possible than they would have had to gotten the eggs from a native or long time holdover.....
Believe it or not , this is not too uncommon....

The late 90's saw many horrible drought conditions for the catskill mountain streams....I personally witnessed an electro shocking at carins pool on the beaverkill where they removed aprox. 50 native browns in the 15-25" class....You can only imagine how upset us regulars were....

We were dealing with very bad droughts which were naturally killing native fish by the hundreds and now the state was removing fish that beat the odds...Their explanation was to be able to replenish the rivers with stocked fish that didn't look stocked AT ALL....These stockies would also technically have the instincts of their native parents....I just wish that these fish would have been returned once river conditions allowed....Multiple years of semi to very severe drought conditions changed tose rivers for generations to come....Used to be able to go up there and ONLY concentrate on the beaverkill and willowemoc, now the upper D and its branches are the best game in town for true trophies...Of course back then A River Runs Through It (the movie) did not exist and there were a few million less fly fisherman to pressure the waters.....Been fly fishing the catskills for trout for about 25 yrs. now, and i definately miss the old days.....Sorry to hijack the thread.....

But maybe you found some genetically sound stockies that were hijacked from another watershed to create superior cookie cutters

[Michael82929]

My guess would say they got mixed in...

Pops stocked the flatbrook last week - was not one small fish in the nets...

All brookies / browns 14 - 16 with many 15 - 17 inch fish

Rainbows 3 - 6 pds.

I would lean on they got mixed in the truck - hard to say / determine. Either way - nice looking fish..

With no real controls of water flows / temperture and conservation - shame we can't get a year round stream that can produce like the elite streams from other geo's.

The one thing that is nice is too see the evolution the stocking program has undertaken in these years.

Never in a million years would I think to see the size of the fish they are throwing in the waters compared to the 90's and early 2000's.

[surfrod]

there was not a large brown trout surplus this year and I can tell you that the "runt" pictured by the OP does *not* look like a typical surplus fingerling or the "searun" browns they stock.

that said, could just have been mixed in, it happens (and perhaps "leakage" is why they didn't have a big brown surplus this year LOL!!)

[baetis]

I find that most of the smaller stocked browns have a silver coloration to them.