Wilsonriverfisher
Not worth aguing over. doesn't sound like you have any info about that river newer than 20-30 years old..
If you didn't know positively what species they were, you should not have kept them even if they were injured, period.
Of course the fish will sexually mature and darken as they head upstream, that is the carotene being redistributed. There is nothing in that river system's diet to provide carotene to the fish so if the meat was not white or damn near they were not residents.
Glad that's cleared up, sure want to keep this forum friendly. That's the problem with this medium of communication, nothing but cold words to go on to tell what the other guy is thinking or saying. It's easy to get things wrong!I apologize for misunderstanding your side of the story.
I still have no doubt those fish aren't year round residents however. plus I have extreme doubts trying to rationalize that there are any fish in the tualitin feeding so exclusively on crawdads that it's meat has carotene transferred from them.
I suppose I should have rephrased my earlier statement to "enough" carotene.
Call me high and mighty if you really think so, but I still don't believe the previous legalities did our fisheries any favors.
"Sure hope they tasted great 'cus you aren't gonna catch them anymore" is all I meant by my previous posts.
I wasn't meaning to say it was wrong to keep and eat fish, but I wasn't clear enough. Unidentified fish however should be looked into further before harvest whether it was 1970 or now.