Are stocked trout genetically modified?

[Bullkllr]

Fry planted trout, imo, almost always turn out to be better fish. But they also require a lake with little or no competing species. Seems like less and lakes (esp. on the westside) get the "rotenone and fry treatment". I guess it's cheaper for the state to manage for mixed species (even if that means planting catchables over fry), and bass guys have more lakes to fish

[j_h_nimrod]

I think genetics determine whether or not a trout tastes good or not. 99% of state planted rainbow trout have poor genetics and are the main reason the meat is white,tasteless and mushy. The quality strains of trout with high oil content and pink meat eat the same feed as the white tasteless ones. There are only a very few select lakes that receive quality trout. Not sure why the state doesn't produce better quality fish when they could easily do so

It's much cheaper to feed them with cheap corn and stuff

With trout it is much more likely diet than genetics making for poor quality flesh. Stockers typically have poor quality flesh in general because the most fish were produced for the least $, but if given a season in the wild eating natural feed the fish is completely different. Even in the same lot of fish from a hatchery, when stocked in a pond, you will see a difference in preferred diet and a difference in flesh taste associated with diet. Cheaper feed brands typically make up protein and fat with cheaper sources of each, which is no longer fish based protein and fat. The higher quality feeds make a tremendous difference in flesh quality.  Producing fish is not a cheap endeavor and people typically would rather have quantity over quality. Easy one of those 7-11" stockers you get cost 1-3$ to produce and if you can save 15+% on feed that is a big difference. You can typically figure for each pound of fish produced it will take .8-1.1lbs of food, add in labor and facility costs...

Ugh, can't do bold from my tablet.... "...for each pound of fished produced it will take .8-1.1lbs of food..." That is a helluva good conversion ratio, at .8 you can get more fish than you feed them. I don't think it works quite that way, even though fish are quite high on the feed conversion ratio, salmon needing 1.2-1.5 pounds of feed per pound of fish, chickens are about 1.8 and lamb is about 6.5. The higher the protein level/quality of feed, the more protein it will produce. If you can find a fish that puts on more weight than it eats, a 0.8 for example, you'd be able to feed the world.

What you fail to see in that conversion is that of overall body weight gained you have a certain percentage of water weight. It seems counter intuitive to think you feed something a pound of food and it gains 1.2 pounds, but it isn't true. With salmonids, in moderate temperatures with good feed and if there is not a need to over exert and burn excess energy, this holds true up until about 1 pound. After that it fluctuates more depending on species and age/size at sexual maturity. There are many variables to this so it is not a hard rule, but with the right conditions it is very common.