Best Laker meat I’ve ever seen, Strange looking laker too

Was out for whitefish and had a laker mixed in, the meat was the most orange I’ve seen on a laker. The fish itself was long and skinny, and completely silver with no markings (other than the lateral line). 100% a normal laker but just goes to show how diet can affect the meat. This one was hanging out with the whitefish, probably been eating what they’ve been eating it’s whole life, which is bugs bugs and more bugs.

Vibrant!

Nice the Brookies I caught yesterday were full of bugs and was just reddish orange you caught a great mixed bag

interesting-----in my experience skinny trout are white and the fat ones orange but I guess there are other variables with diet.

Did you try your homemade wormy things at all?

When we fish little lakers in algonquin the meat ranges from deep red like a coho to pale orange. Same lake, diff lake, 1-4lbs doesnt seem to matter.

Ive never caught a ‘large’ algonquin laker but I imagine they start to turn white and greasy the larger they get.

The lakes out of Lake Huron are almost exclusively pale white but they tend to be 5-20lbs)

The fish we catch around haliburton have that variability. I think the largest was around 4 pounds, very orange meat, above that weight we have not caught one that was that dark orange color. Externally they are also darker in color.

I think it depends mostly on how well fed they are.

Doesn’t matter how well they are fed but what the are feeding on. Carotene in their forage makes the meat orange. Fresh water shrimp, crayfish and some insects carry lots of carotene.

I usually find the correlation to the bigger the Laker the whiter the meat having more to do with their ability to eat larger bait fish which bait fish do not have carotene in them. The smaller fish eat more fresh water shrimp and insects as they are easy to catch and abundant.

A lake I fish has cutbows in it. The lake has no open water baitfish at all.
I catch cutbows with the most orange meat I have ever seen in there.

Yup. This is right on in my experience. Although some lakes (Algonquin) may have such low populations of any major kind of baitfish that even bigger fish have orange flesh...even though they’re capable of eating larger prey, there just is none available.

fillets off a brookie...

It’s absolutely what I see on specks, especially in the fall, and I’ve seen nice orange laker meat on the regular, this one was “glowing” lol is what I meant to convey. That speck meat, Drew, is making my canoe yell at me to go to “the spot”. Haha

These fillets are from a laker we caught last week flatlining . Never seen lakers this red before .

That is now the nicest laker meat I’ve seen. I’m hungry lol