Cutthroat vs Rainbow

How do I tell these two types of trout apart?  All the pictures I have looked up look the same to me.  (maybe because I'm color blind?)

Cutthroat have distinct orange slashes under their jaw.

Z

Cutts and 'bows regularly interbreed. Sometimes you get a "cutt-bow" and that can throw you for a loop!
Some of the fresh-in-from-the-salt Searun Cutts I have caught from pools near the head of tidewater in the late summer are so bright, and still lacking any orange throat markings, that they look just like small steelhead, except for the slightly longer mouth. They didn't even have any spots below the lateral line, and had a definite border between their gray/green backs and their chrome-silver sides. I think that those might have actually been searun cutt-bows, since the creek I have caught them out of gets a small healthy run of wild steelhead and lots of searun cutthroat. The jury is still out on this one, though.
Cutthroats are usually more heavily spotted than 'bows, but that is not always the case. Also the jawbone extends behind the eye a bit on cutts, and ends about at the eye on 'bows. So cutts have proportionately bigger mouths.
Check for teeth on the back of the tongue. Cutts should have 'em. Rainbows and Steelhead don't.  Can't say if cutt-bows do or don't.

I'm going to check again when I get home, but I think some of those fish I caught in Walupt on the 4th are actually cutts.  I remember one of them having a REALLY big mouth.  They were also all VERY different from eachother in their spot patterns.

Cutthroats are usually more heavily spotted than 'bows, but that is not always the case.

Generally the case with Coastal Cutthroat, but not the case with Westslope Cutthroat or Lahontan Cutthroat.  Too many cutties subspecies!!!

-Allen

So all of these trout that I caught at Walupt have teeth on the tongue and pretty long jaw lines.  Some have larger teeth than others. 

So, is this a cutthroat, cutbow, or rainbow?  Can I enter it as a cutthroat for AOTY?

This one doesn't really look like a rainbow, and it's got teeth.


Camera wouldn't really focus on the teeth


This one looks like a rainbow but has a REALLY long jaw and colored like a rainbow

You're gonna need Bsteves on that one.

Lee can you flip one over and show us right under the jaw.  That is where the marking is for Cutthroat.  I grew up in western MT and that is what I caught most as a kid.  They test really damn good!

rainbows is what I see in the pics.
 The extended jaw is not present.
 rainbows jaw stops at the front of the eye and cutty's stop behind the eye socket. (as previously mentioned)

I'm not gonna worry about it for AOTY.  I also can't take any more pictures, as I filleted them up last night.  They fought really hard, had teeth on the tongue, and the jaw went past the eye socket.  They didn't have any markings under the jaw though.  I think they were all just hybrids.

Sources have told me a lot of planters are cutbows.  They are supposedly a lot heartier and grow faster than the straight rainbows. 

I've been trying to figure out the difference too since I've pulled some large trout out of the lake here that have had a suprising amount of red color on their throats and bodies.  When cleaning them up I've noticed most of the smaller rainbows (without all the red) have a fairly white meat but the large ones that I'm think may be cutbows are very orange much like salmon.  I don't know if this color change usually occurs in the older fish or perhaps only those that have been in the lake a while and off the hatchery feed.  Maybe this gives them time to color up a bit.  I don't know other than that they are very tasty!

Speaking of meat color, when I filleted these out last night (yeah, I was practicing my knife skills on these tiny fish) the meat was DARK red.  Reddest meat I've ever seen on trout.

Yeah, the biologists say that the cutts have those little rows of small teeth on the back of the tongue. They used to call 'em "hyoid teeth" or something like that, but now call 'em something else. Cutt-bows may have those teeth, but I couldn't say for sure. Cutt-bows can be hard to identify, though, so I wouldn't worry about it.

I've seen a huge variation in markings/color on the Rainbows in various lakes, too.

I've heard that the pink meat, if natural and not due to beta carotene in the hatchery food pellets, is the result of the trout feeding on a diet of freshwater shrimp and/or scuds.

One thing that should be noted, these fish aren't stockers.  I checked back through 2006 and WDFW doesn't stock Walupt Lake.

Lee, OK, there we have it! Walupt Lake has naturally spawning rainbows and cutts. The feeder (spawning) creeks are closed to fishing year round. Perfect scenario for producing native cutt-bow hybrids. So there's a good chance any of those trout you caught that displayed both rainbow and cutthroat characteristics were indeed cutt-bows.
In fact, I remember a discussion of cutt-bows on another site where someone stated that there is probably a mix of both cutthroat and rainbow genes in most of the fish in such populations, with a lot of variation in the mix from one fish to another, since the cutt-bow isn't a sterile hybrid, and you end up with hybrids spawning with other hybrids.