Any idea what kind of infection this could be?
Hey guys, hoping you guys can help with figuring this out. Fishing today in a trout lake, central MN, not 100% on water temp, but getting into the kayak it didnt feel very cool. This is the only picture I ended up taking of the trout, but this was one of 4 that we caught that looked like this. (We didn't keep any of these ones, but kept a few others that looked fine.)
Bellies were red/inflamed, seemed like they were sluffing some slime/scales off while getting them off the hooks. The one in the picture obviously has some predator marks on the back, but the others where much more pronounced in the redness/infection.
Any ideas? We were thinking possibly columnaris? I am debating reaching out to the DNR, simply because this is the first we've ever seen the trout present like this in this lake.