Salmon or Trout, New Zealand

by Glenn
(Christchurch, New Zealand)

Late at night up at the Rakaia River lure fishing, many hours after I would gladly have called a warm blanket home. I had that moment that I had waited for. How I had waited.

I had hooked myself a salmon after 10 years of electric fences, stumbling and fumbling through underbrush and gauze trying to navigate to a potential hole. The despair when a flood wipes away your Heaven of a hole and by the time you get the time to find another, the season is already over and I'm wondering why I'm still out there Salmon fishing.

This may have not been my fish. I could already tell something was not quite right. It was a little too easy. Where was the fight? The struggle between man and beast was absent.

When I got it in after a couple runs I held it to the light. Alas, what is this beautiful fish?

My fear is that it is a rainbow trout. I still can't manage to identify this fish. What type of fish is it?

I don't think that it is big enough to be running so early in is lifespan for a salmon. It looks more like a sea run trout like a steelhead, rather than a salmon.

Help me out here, I will try not to be disappointed.