I recently kept and ate a female rainbow trout, caught in a reservoir. I was surprised to find two sets of eggs in her, an old one and a new one. Bear in mind, this is mid-November, and as far as I know this reservoir only contains spring-spawning rainbows (among other species).
The old set of eggs were turning yellow, and all of them were split open. They looked a bit like soggy corn kernels. Essentially they were spoiled and decomposing, but still there. The newer eggs were normal size and color for eggs that are well developed and close to spawn time (Not early-development tiny ones).
It was actually pretty gross, but the flesh seemed fine so I ate it anyway.
I did some googling, and found minimal information on this topic. The information I found seemed to imply that this is a common condition among farmed trout, or those that don't have a place to spawn.
I also found it stated that brown trout can reabsorb such unlaid eggs, but rainbow trout cannot. Therefore female rainbows in such condition will die with 2 years of unlaid eggs.
I didn't find any scientific studies to back up these claims. To my knowledge, rainbow trout do typically lay their eggs in reservoirs even when more "natural" spawning conditions do not exist. This was a large reservoir that stocks rainbows annually. I'm assuming this is an unusual case, as I've never seen it before.
Questions - Anyone else seen this? Any more information about it, or known causes?
