I caught these fish in a lagoon on the California coast last spring. I was told both steelhead and cutthroats make their way into the lagoon when the ocean breaches through the sand bank that separates it from the ocean.
I always assumed they were steelhead, until I saw the pic of the coastal cutthroat that was posted here yesterday. It had never occured to me that the cutthroats would also be silvery like steelhead from living in the ocean. I'm not from the west so had never caught a cutthroat before.
So what do you think? Steelhead or cutthroat?
Fun story: the wounds on the second fish are from an osprey that picked it up and started flying away with it while it was on my line. Luckily it stayed hooked it was dropped.
Posted by literally_everything