Trout · Oncorhynchus mykiss
Rainbow Trout
Also called Redband, Bow.
Short answer
The rainbow trout is a silver fish with a pink lateral stripe and small black spots scattered over the back, tail and fins. It is native to the Pacific slope of North America and is now the most widely stocked trout in the world. Steelhead are the same species, having gone to sea and returned.
How to identify a rainbow trout
- Lateral stripe
- A pink to red band along the flank, strongest on spawning fish and faint on lake and sea-run fish.
- Spots
- Small black spots scattered over the back, the dorsal fin and — crucially — across the whole tail.
- Tail
- Radiating rows of spots across the entire tail. This is the quickest way to separate it from a brown.
- No red adipose border
- Unlike a cutthroat, no red or orange slash under the jaw.
What a rainbow trout is
The rainbow is the trout most people picture, and almost none of its worldwide range is natural. It evolved in the rivers of the Pacific slope, and in the 1870s and 1880s eggs taken from California's McCloud River were shipped east and then abroad, which is why rainbows now swim in New Zealand, Patagonia, Japan and most of Europe. It is hardy, it tolerates warmer water than a brook trout, and it grows fast on hatchery feed, which is exactly why it became the default stocked fish. In its native range it still exists as wild redband and coastal strains, and those fish are a different proposition from a stocked one.
- Native to
- Native to Pacific drainages of western North America, from Alaska to northern Mexico. Introduced almost everywhere else on earth.
- Typical size
- Typically 10 to 18 inches in rivers. Twenty inches is a good fish anywhere; tailwater and lake fish exceed ten pounds.
- What they eat
- Aquatic insects for most of its life — mayfly and caddis nymphs, midges, and adults on the surface. Larger fish add scuds, crustaceans, eggs and baitfish, and in tailwaters a rainbow may live almost entirely on midges and scuds.
Where rainbow trout live
Wild and native through the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, California and the interior redband waters of Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. Wild and self-sustaining but introduced across the Rockies, the Great Lakes, the Ozarks and parts of Appalachia. Stocked in every state in this guide that stocks trout at all.
Fly fishing in Colorado Fly fishing in Arkansas Fly fishing in Utah Fly fishing in Pennsylvania Fly fishing in California
Conservation status
Secure as a species and abundant. Several native inland redband and coastal strains are of conservation concern in their home drainages, and some are managed under their own rules.
Protected status and the rules that follow from it are set state by state and change. Before you fish, check the current regulations for the water you are standing in — this page is a starting point, not a legal reference.
How to catch rainbow trout
Rainbows feed in the current and hold in faster water than a brown will tolerate, so fish the riffles and the seams. They are the most willing of the trout to take a dry fly and the most forgiving of an imperfect drift, which is why they are the fish most anglers catch first. On tailwaters they become extremely selective to small food, and a size 20 midge and 6X is a normal rig for a fish that would take a size 10 attractor in a freestone river.
- Spots across the whole tail means rainbow. A brown's tail is nearly clean.
- They hold in faster water than browns. Fish the riffle, not the slow pool.
- A steelhead is a rainbow that went to sea. Same species, different life history.
Flies that work for rainbow trout
Each of these is a card in the deck, and each has a full page in Our Fly-brary.
Keep reading
- How to release a trout — handling, and why it matters more for some species than others
- How to read water — where each of these fish holds
- Hatches and what trout eat — the food these fish are feeding on
- Fly fishing by state — which species you will meet, state by state
Brown Trout Brook Trout Cutthroat Trout Steelhead Bull Trout Lake Trout Golden Trout Arctic Grayling Dolly Varden Tiger Trout Mountain Whitefish