Lonesome Lake - Tiger trout?

M

Modest_Man

Steelhead
Hey guys,

Was up at Lonesome Lake this weekend messing around with a 3wt and a stand up paddle board and I landed a 10" (what I believe to be) tiger trout. I'm no slouch when it comes to salmonid ID's and I'm pretty positive that's what I caught. No photos as I figured I'd take a spill off the SUP so I didn't have any thing with me but a paddle and a rod.

All I can find sleuthing is this from 2018-

But the WDFW lake info only states brook trout-
wdfw.wa.gov

Lonesome

wdfw.wa.gov wdfw.wa.gov

Does anyone know if WDFW did stock tiger trout in Lonesome? If so, it would be a new "species" for me. All the other fish I caught were brookies.
 
If this is Lonesome near Mt. Rainier, about 1,800 tiger trout fry were stocked in 2019. This was a joint experiment between Trail Blazers and WDFW to see if stocking the tigers on top of the reproducing brookie population would help control the brookies. The hope was that the tigers would get big enough to start eating the smaller brookies as tiger trout are known to be aggressive.

The tigers were stocked in two batches, one in June and the other in September. The fish stocked in September had their adipose fin removed so each batch could be identified when caught. Part of the experiment was to see if the early or late stocked fish performed better.

As you saw, the tigers haven't gotten much size. With the lake overrun with brookies, there probably isn't enough food for the tigers to get to any size and help reduce the brookie population.
 
AlpineFisher said:
If this is Lonesome near Mt. Rainier, about 1,800 tiger trout fry were stocked in 2019. This was a joint experiment between Trail Blazers and WDFW to see if stocking the tigers on top of the reproducing brookie population would help control the brookies. The hope was that the tigers would get big enough to start eating the smaller brookies as tiger trout are known to be aggressive.

The tigers were stocked in two batches, one in June and the other in September. The fish stocked in September had their adipose fin removed so each batch could be identified when caught. Part of the experiment was to see if the early or late stocked fish performed better.

As you saw, the tigers haven't gotten much size. With the lake overrun with brookies, there probably isn't enough food for the tigers to get to any size and help reduce the brookie population.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the excellent info! Growing to 10" in 5 years is pretty rough. This one did have an adipose. I'm impressed there are still some tigers around in that lake with how accessible it is and the amount of folks I saw fishing.

There is active logging happening on the FS road 75 right now with cables stretched above the road - so if anyone has plans to head up there you have to go early, late, or on weekends (closed to traffic during the work week hours).
 
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