Fish IDs needed

[Anderoo]

Joining in a little, late - these are all brown trout. The variation is normal, but I find that the chalk stream fish (which these are) which are buttery brown tend to be the truly wild stock with the local genotype of pattern. The mroe silvery ones (generally) are stocked and often triploid. I draw this conclusion from catching lots of chalk strem fish and noticed that the smaller ones which wouldn't have been stocked were nearly always buttery brown. The silvery ones I would say are a different strain - most likely stocked.

 

They may subsequently spawn (unless they were triploids) and therefore their progeny are more silvery. The loss of natural genoptye is why the Wild Trout Trust are encouraging natural regeneration of trout streams rather than stocking.

 

That said brownies are very variable!

 

Nice fish, must go there sometime

 

Thanks Mike - and everyone else - I think that's pretty conclusive. I will assume that the dark, buttery brown ones are truely wild and the more silvery ones are either escaped stockies (the bigger ones) or their offspring (the smaller ones). The silvery ones outnumber the dark ones significantly and most are smaller than the dark ones, but I think both types are breeding successfully.

 

Yes, you should try it sometime!

 

The dark brown ones are my favourite - they are the most gorgeous, rich looking fish I've ever caught. All are carefully returned, by the way, I much prefer to see them zip away over the gravel to sizzle away in a frying pan

[Anderoo]

I've never fly fished in my life but I hope I will soon. Next season for sure.

 

But should I be a classicist and adopt upsteam dry fly tactics or adopt that darn Skues minor chalk stream tactics as adopted by Anderoo? Nymphs

 

With putty

 

Dry fly purist Halford would turn in his grave...

 

Coolio fish or fishes though!

 

And definitely brownies. I fish the Kennet and Hampshire Avon regularly with coarse fishing tactics and though a slightly different tinge, these all look like the brownies that regularly fall hook, line and sinker for my maggot bait. It makes you understand why the 19th centuy gentleman came up with the art of fluff chucking such that the olde trout got a sporting chance.

 

Nice fish or fishes mate. And well angled.

 

Do it, do it, do it!

 

It is a wonderful way of fishing, and actually makes catching trout slightly challenging I catch an awful lot more on trotted maggots once the coarse season opens, but casting to a rising trout with light fly gear is a real joy.

 

The nice thing about the little streams is that long casting isn't necessary, so even the most cack-handed caster (e.g. my good self) can drop a fly approximately where it needs to be.

 

Arbocop's advice about starting on still water is good. Add in tricky flows and a bit of wind and it can get frustrating sometimes.

 

The upstream dry is for some reason regarded as the pinnacle of purist fly fishing but actually it's not hard. You can see the fish rising so all you need to do is get close enough to drop a dry that matches what it's eating (again, easy to spot as there will be several 'clues' floating downstream!) just above it and take up the slack as it floats back towards you. Impossibly exciting

 

The upstream nymph, however - grrr! Without doubt the most technically difficult fishing I've ever done. Not only do you have all the issues with the dry (getting to the right place without spooking the fish, not spooking them with the cast, a drag-free drift) but on top of that, you can't see the fish so you're fishing blind; choosing the right fly is much harder as you can't see what they're feeding on (a rummage in the gravel with a landing net is a good idea, to see what nymphs are lurking); spotting a take is REALLY HARD! as all you get is a pause or little twitch in the end of the fly line, which could be the fly tripping over gravel or catching a bit of weed; you need to get the fly to drift down at the right depth... it is not easy. This was actually the first time I'd used the putty on a river and it did make it easier, as you'd expect. Hopefully one day I'll get good enough to do away with it

 

The main benefit of the putty (aside from controlling depth and indicating a bite) is that the water there can be quite turbulent, and the end of the fly line is often dragged under - once that happens, I have no idea what's going on!

 

It's always worth checking out whether coarse fishing clubs have bits of river where they allow you to fly fish during the closed season. With most people getting club books for the carp lakes, the rivers are often completely ignored. I used to do the same thing at a bit of the river Wey when I lived in London. I don't think they know just how much good river trout fishing is worth

Edited June 3, 2010 by Anderoo

[Worms]

With that overwhelming majority I think I'll stick to identifying reptiles and amphibians!

[Anderoo]

With that overwhelming majority I think I'll stick to identifying reptiles and amphibians!

 

You went and got me all excited, you...you...downstream nympher

[Errrm]

I've always wanted to learn to fly fish, I wouldn't have a clue where to start though. One day I'll get around to it though hopefully :-)

[Worms]

You went and got me all excited, you...you...downstream nympher

Ooh I say, that's a bit below the belt!

 

 

I'm sort of glad I stick to my unstocked waters now, makes ID a bit easier!

Edited June 3, 2010 by Worms

[Andy Macfarlane]

They're all Brown Trout and as far as I can tell, there's nothing to suggest any of them are stockies either, although some (the last 3) may be the offspring of stocked fish.

 

The first 2 fish are almost certainly natural to the river. Such colours develop with variation in environment, water colour, diet and so on. Reared fish lose their colour from intensive rearing in a stale environment, on a rich but unvaried diet. The accelerated growth rates also impede the chance for brilliant colours to come through.

 

Stockies normally display damage to the fins, from being confined with large numbers of their siblings, in a tank or net. Even if the fins had healed and grown in, there is normally a noticeable colour variation between the old fin and the area of new growth. Stockies also often have scarring along the flanks, again from being confined in pens of some description. For all 3 of the suspect fish to be free from fin colour variation and scarring, would be highly unlikely.

 

Trout Parr would have lost the tell-take 'thumbprints' that juveniles display. Salmon Parr would still have some sign of these markings and since there is none, they aren't salmon.

 

For reference, Trout Parr have 6 - 8 thumbprints, along the length of each flank. Salmon Parr have 9 - 11.

 

None of the fish suggest they are Sea-Trout either. Sea-Trout all but lose any colourful pigments, leaving only silver, black, grey and white. Some red pigments may remain in the adipose fin, while the fish is young but by the time the fish has been at sea for any length of time, the likelihood of any colour remaining lessens. The black spots usually become extremely pronounced, the tail and tail-wrist becomes enlarged from oceanic travel and the scales on a Sea-Trout also become more apparent, like those of a Chub or a Roach.

[Anderoo]

Thanks for that Andy - very interesting

[Vagabond]

With that overwhelming majority I think I'll stick to identifying reptiles and amphibians!

 

No, they aren't frogs nor adders neither - but democracy has given us a coalition government, so why not fish ID too?

 

I have been away fishing up norf for a few days, but saw these pics (or some like them) on the fly fishing thread a week ago.

 

As I suggested then, identification of salmonids is not always straightforward. In seventy seasons' fishing, I have had literally thousands of brown trout (from four continents) and a fair few seatrout and salmon too. So I have seen a pretty fair cross section - some with obvious ID, a few that were far from obvious, so I was a bit surprised at how "confident" many of the IDs on these particular fish were.

 

Let me ask a question

 

If you had caught those two silvery fish with no red spots and wristy forked tails, and along had come an EA bailiff who said in his not-so-humble-opinion they were not brownies, and wanted to see your migratory trout/salmon licence (and you only had a trout/coarse licence)........what do you think your chances in court might be ?

 

I don't think an AN democratic vote on ID would help much.

[Mark Wintle]

I challenged a top EA bod at one of the NEC shows a few years ago about 'migratory' trout. Brown trout and seatrout are the same species and the only way the EA can prove you have a migratory trout is either to catch you red-handed fishing/netting in the sea or to test for radioactive caesium which proves the fish has fed at sea. As this test is impractical and unrealistic for an angler to be able to do their 'law' is useless. That doesn't mean that a magistrate would not find you guilty though they should throw out the case. This law is ONLY about raising more revenue.

 

I also asked about 'slob' trout as we call them. We catch a lot of these estuarine fish in autumn and it is possible to tell them from seatrout as they don't have that iridescent mauve that true seatrout have. He didn't have a clue what they were classified as; they don't go to sea as such.

 

It is far too late to worry about 'native' trout and wild trout. Extensive stocking of Loch Leven trout in Southern streams goes back over a century so the chance of wild strains being undiluted are remote; even unstocked rivers like the Corfe (Dorset) river will have seatrout descended from strains of trout from else where. A few years ago I rememeber reading that it was thought that there were 4 species of brown trout in the UK but I haven't heard anything for a long while. This is not the same as the Victorians who initially had many types of trout.