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Almost every wild bow I've caught had basically no stripe at all and were pretty washed out. Not saying they're all like that.

See post #30, 1st pic. That's a confirmed wild.

EVW659, your rainbow may be wild, and it certainly is well fed. I can't say for sure mostly because I can't see the caudal fin.

Pcray, absence of red stripe may not mean a fish is stocked, I've caught plenty of bows in Big Spring that the red was absent or very pail. Ditto for the Upper Delaware, but the orange is not typical of a rainbow that is wild. I saw your pics and I believe they probably are wild, I've caught fish like them that I believe were wild. There are so many variations of rainbows that you could possibly catch several very different looking bows in the same stream.
Robert Behnke's book shows the diffent variations of the bows and he also explains the dissemination of the fish from the west coast.

So you're saying orange means stocked, but pink/red not a prerequisite to be wild? Interesting. Can't say I have any examples counter to this, guess I never really thought about it.

The fish was wild. It's from an unstocked stream known to have wild rainbows in NW PA. There are at least a dozen such streams on the western side of the state. I know of 5 in NW PA and then a few more in Westmoreland County. Here's another from the same stream, this one is really ugly, but I include it because it shows the fins really well. It does have a faint stripe, and apparantly had a run in with a predator of some sort.

I can see the red stripe, it is very faint, but where's the pectoral fin? It seems to be missing. Good example of coloration. I'm not ready to call it wild though because of the missing fin.

It just doesn't show up in the pic. That's from an unstocked, class A rainbow stream. Well, actually it's above the class A section, but there's bows nonetheless. Over a mile hike from the nearest access point, with no access points upstream.

Here's another. This one from another stream in the same system, also known to have wild bows and miles above the nearest stocking point.

These are all good examples of what wild bows should look like, not the white tips on the fins, almost always present on wild fish. Spots all the way to the white belly, and not just a few, but hundreds also spots all the way to the bottom of the tail. well formed bodies with good proportions, head not too small for the body or too large for the body. Indicates good diet and fairly normal growth rate. Finally very olive coloring to the white belly.
Note there are also parr marks, though I have seen parr marks on plenty of stockies, but on stockies they are usually very faint.