Rainbow Trout

Rainbow trout are named for the pink-to-red band running down each flank over a silver, green or olive body heavily speckled with small black spots, including across the entire tail. Spawning males darken and develop deep red cheeks and sides. Stocked hatchery fish are often pale and silvery with worn fins, while wild fish from clear rivers are vividly colored. Several subspecies exist, including the Columbia River redband, the Kern River golden trout and the Kamloops strain, and the sea-run form is the steelhead.

The species is native to Pacific drainages from Alaska to Baja California and east to the Rockies in the Columbia and Fraser basins. Hatchery programs since the 1870s have put rainbows in cold streams and lakes across the entire US and on every continent except Antarctica. They need water below about 70 F (21 C), doing best at 50 to 60 F (10 to 16 C), and are tolerant of a wide range of conditions, which is why they are the default stocked trout in tailwaters, urban ponds and high mountain lakes alike.

Rainbows are opportunistic drift feeders in rivers, holding in current seams, riffles and pool heads and eating aquatic insects, crustaceans, eggs and small fish. In lakes they cruise shorelines and the thermocline for insects, scuds, leeches and baitfish. They feed most actively at dawn and dusk and during insect hatches, and large fish become increasingly piscivorous. Wild rainbows spawn in spring, typically March through May, in gravel riffles.

For many anglers the rainbow is the first trout they ever catch and the fish that keeps them coming back: it takes flies, lures and bait, fights with acrobatic leaps and lives in beautiful places. Tailwater fisheries below big dams in Arkansas, Missouri, Colorado and Utah grow rainbows to trophy size year-round, and put-and-take stocking makes them the most-caught trout in the country.