Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Collecting roe from pond trout - when?

Hello everyone,

I have a pond in Ontario, Canada stocked with rainbow and brown trout. I would like to focus my harvest of the trout when they have well developed skiens so I can collect the eggs for bait when I fish our rainbow/steelhead rivers (in addition to the meat). I have harvested rainbows and browns throughout most of the year but am having a hard time finding when they have well developed skeins of roe.

Does anyone know what time of year rainbows and browns would have mature eggs in stocked ponds? Our wild rainbows in the rivers spawn in the spring but I have seen hatcheries here spawn rainbows in the fall, so I am not sure what it would be like for my pond. I kept this rainbow this week (14") and it has very tiny skeins that were just about as small as they can be while still being noticable.



On the other hand, I kept this brown at around the same time (end of September) a couple of years ago and you can see the eggs are still immature but much more developed than the ones in the rainbow.





Any insight on this is appreciated.

Thanks very much.