Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)
Rainbow Trout salmon family Salmonidae.
You can find Rainbow Trout in U.P. Lakes and Rivers as well as the Great lakes where they become Steelhead.
Like many fish the best time to catch Rainbow Trout is during the early morning hours. To be more specific, fish from dawn until about two hours after sunrise. The next best time is late afternoon, from about three hours prior to sunset until dusk.
Rainbow trout don’t have eyelids and can’t dilate their pupils, they must seek shade in extreme sun to avoid bright lights.
Artificial Inline spinners, spoons, curly tail jigs and grubs, or very small crankbaits are fantastic smaller lures for rainbow trout between 10-12 inches in size.
Wild Steelhead trout are essentially Rainbow Trout, although Steelhead trout are a unique species. Individuals develop differently depending on their environment. All wild steelhead trout hatch in gravel-bottomed, fast-flowing, well-oxygenated rivers and streams. Some stay in fresh water all their lives and are called rainbow trout. Steelhead trout will migrate to the ocean grow larger than the Rainbows that stay in freshwater. When the spawn comes they then return to freshwater streams to repeat the cycle.
Unlike a salmon, which dies after spawning, steelhead trout can spawn, return to the ocean, and migrate back upstream to spawn several times.
Offspring of two steelhead trout, and offspring of two resident rainbow trout can create a steelhead or a rainbow trout all dependent if the fish stay in freshwater river or return to the great lakes and ocean.
Hybrid Trout and variants come from mixing Brown, Book, and Lake trout making Tiger and Splake Trout. Rainbows can split to steelhead trout in the great lakes or live in local rivers as rainbows.
