Beardslee trout
Caption: "Bluebacks from Lake Crescent, Washington; Two Hours Work, October 28, 1895". Image from Notes on Fishes, Little Known or New to Science, by David Starr Jordan, in Proceedings of the California Academy of Science, Series 2, Vol. VI (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1897). Note: David Starr Jordan was first President of Stanford University. Image above used with permission, courtesy of the UW Freshwater and Marine Image Bank.

Beardslee trout

This photograph, shows (left) Lester A. Beardslee, Rear-Admiral, United States Navy, and (right) Michael J. Carrigan, Port Angeles, WA newspaper publisher, real estate developer, and Mayor elected in 1896. The caption says "Bluebacks from Lake Crescent, Washington; Two Hours Work, October 28, 1895".

Beardslee rainbow trout were originally called Bluebacks because of the deep indigo blue color of the backs of the fish.

Rear-Admiral L. A. Beardslee fished for Bluebacks at Lake Crescent during visits of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet to Port Angeles, in 1895 and 1896. Rear-Admiral Beardslee wrote to Dr. David Starr Jordan about the fish and enclosed photographs with the mail. At the time, Dr. Jordan was the leading American ichthyologist and the first President of Stanford University. After further investigation, Dr. Jordan named the trout after Rear-Admiral Beardslee.

The Rainbow trout subspecies known as the Beardslee rainbow trout is endemic only to Lake Crescent, and have been known to grow to 15 to 20 pounds in weight, with a few even reaching 22 pounds in weight. The largest Beardslee trout ever caught reportedly weighed 23 pounds and was caught by Theodore F. Rixon, an early local engineer and surveyor, who lived for a while at Fairholm. The four largest trout shown in this photograph weigh (from left to right) 6, 11½, 11, and 11½ pounds.

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