Hey guys greetings from NW pa. I was fishing a favorite stream today with a friend and the two browns we caught all day had a bunch of leeches on their gills. Any one else out there seen this? The trout seemed in fine shape, we just took a couple of minutes and took the leeches off the trout and returned the trout to the water. Attached is a pict of one of the trout. I didn't think to take a pict to show ya

Let me know if this is the norm.
Thanks.
Seems I cannot get it to upload...not sure what's up.

If you are using a photo sharing sure (photo bucket) lower case the IMG.

It is a jpg off my phone. Not sure whats up I have uploaded picts like this before. The picts off my computer. Here is another try.
And another try.....nope I don't know what's up. I will try another........guess I cannot up load picts from my computer here now . Not sure why as nothing changed on my end.

Here is another try.
I dunno, any one have any other suggestions?

Resize the picture.

Stocked fish?

I've seen the same thing. Also,have seen fish with some sort of creepy crawlies stuck to them. Kinda disturbing to grab a fish to unhook them and see these little lice-like things running around on them. Yuck.

Never seen either on wild fish. I'm geussing crowded hatchery conditions increase the likelihood of parasites.

Kev

Both of these fish were stocked last fall. But I have yet to see this on these fish. Kinda creepy to see like 2 dozen leeches on these trout.
Still messin with the picts.

use a site like photobucket to upload the pics


Or open them in a program and resize them.

Paint seems to resize pretty well just by opening and resaving.

Here is a try with the resized pict.???????????????????????? I croped the pict to make it smaller still no luck.

try smaller in MB/kb size not in dimension.

or just text it to someone who can post a pic...

jut email it to me I'll post it.

That's something that is probably not considered when stocking wild trout streams, in fact for years it wasn't even given a though, that the trout stocked might be carrying diseases or parasites.

I've seen these leeches on the gills of holdover trout from Buffalo Creek (SW Pa) in the winter. The fish, brown trout, appeared healthy. I've also seen the lice during the summer on thermally stressed fish in marginal streams. I, too, have never these parasites on trout from the higher quality trout streams.

Quote:


I'm pretty sure they check the fish. Just read an article not too long ago about a whole hatchery of steelhead smolts that were going to be killed due to disease.

Sounds like you saw "gill maggots" on the trout, the parasite is actually a female copepod that attaches to the gills of a fish. I would be surprised if they were stocked with the parasite.