What's wrong with this Steelhead

[PickerelHunter]

Yesterday I was out in that harbour in Jordan behind the beacon where that big old boat is. I ended up catching a steelhead about 15 inches, not very big. It looked a little beat up, had a pretty decent gash just above it's anal fin. I ended up keeping the guy, put him in my little minnow bucket (I wasn't planning on keeping anything), and took him home. Put him in the fridge, and today when I filleted him, it was extremely bloody, more then I've ever seen. WHen I cut by the head, lots of blood by the gills, which I guess happens, but also quite a bit by the ribs and towards the tail of it. It also seemed like the guts were a deep red. I've filleted quite a few fish before, but never a steelhead, and I've never seen it like that, maybe it's a steelhead thing. Any idea what might have been wrong with it, and if I should even bother eating it? Since I had it in the minnow bucket for a bit, it jumped around and might have injured itself somehow that way by knocking it's head or something against the side, but that wouldn't really explain the bleeding inside the rest of the body. Maybe that gash by it's anal fin had something to do with it...any ideas?

[Guest bigfish1965]

Sounds like a roving walleye,pike or musky got a hold of him and gave him a good beating.

[Guest old guy]

If you intend on keeping a fish for the table, the first thing you should do after killing it is to bleed it. This means cutting out the gills and letting the blood run out.

Blood in the muscle tissue usually means that the fish has been bruised and battered. Perhaps droppped on the ground etc. Much the same as in humans -a bruise is simply blood that has invaded the tissue as a result of trauma. To keep your table fare fish as fresh as possible- bleed it and keep it as cold as possible.