Help me understand what I was seeing

I'm still trying to figure out the mad river and the trout in the stream.  Last friday I waded down the mad river from Lippincott.  It took about 3 hours.  I waded down to the dam/tractor crossing in the stream.  I found 3 fishing holes.  The last hole had hundreds if not thousands of fish.  There were fish all around me.  A few people have told me that the stream has been stocked for the fall already.  I was certain to get some trout.  I swear every fish I saw was not a trout.  It doesn't make sense to me.  The fish didn't look like trout to me.  I was close enough to see them, but they didn't look like trout to me.  They looked like sucker fisher.  Orange fins, brown body, mouth orangish and pointing down.  Like a sucker fish.  I was unable to catch anything.  These fish were chasing each other around in huge schools.  They looked like they were spawning.  They were not interested in anything I was throwing at them, nymph, dry, fake worm.  Everything I threw just went right down the middle of the huge school of fish.  Was I in the middle of the stocked trout or was I in a stream with a bunch of sucker fish?  They sure looked like suckers to me and I sure felt like one.  4 hours in the mad and nothing to show.