I also caught a laker this summer with the skeletal deformity that your fish had. However, I'm not so sure about the whirling disease as it seems that lake trout are not able to get this infection....See this excerpt from the VT Fish and Game......
Are all fish susceptible to whirling disease? Current information indicates this is a disease that inflicts salmonids only. While all salmonids, with the possible exception of lake trout, are subject to infection, some species are more susceptible than others (presented in order of high to low): rainbow trout, sockeye salmon, golden trout, cutthroat trout, brook trout, steelhead, chinook salmon, Atlantic salmon, brown trout, and coho salmon.
Several other sources on the net describing "whirling disease" state that lake trout are not affected by the paracite that causes this disease. Wonder if John Viar has any information regarding this?? Also, if it does have an infectious cause, we should remove these fish from the lake, but the fish I caught was well under the legal lenght limit. Would this be overlooked if I kept this fish to remove it from the population?? Common sense says yes but???
