Should I stay or should I go?
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 28 February 2007 12:19
- Written by John Gray
Should I stay or should I go? A serious question indeed! So much so that an adolescent trout may, on some rivers, go through a bit of an identity crisis. “Am I a brown trout or a sea trout?”, she will ask. “Will I emigrate or stay at home?” The answer will generally depend, as it so often does, on the home environment and parental expectation.
On the short, rocky, acidic streams of the west coast, there will be little to keep the ambitious young female at home and the general expectation will be that she will go to sea as soon as she is old enough, there to make something of herself, to mature into a beautiful sea trout, who will have many suitors when she returns for her annual summer holiday. Indeed, she will, in all probability, have to fight them off. She can’t really be bothered with all this sex business though ….. she thinks it’s all very over-rated….. and it’s always over so quickly! Still, she likes the attention and that seems to make all the travel worthwhile and it’s always very satisfying to see the young fry when she comes home. There will always be some, however, who are just not cut out for adventure, or who are perhaps expected to follow the perfectly respectable, if slightly boring, family tradition of keeping the home fires burning, but the majority of the young females will elect to get out as soon as they can.
Most of the males, on the other hand, are pretty lazy and can’t be bothered with all the hassle of moving away. They are sexually precocious and generally have there minds on only one thing. They can only get that at home, so they may as well hang around until the chance comes. It may be only once a year but boy, is the Great October Orgy worth waiting for! It’s not much fun for the rest of the year though. Things are hard at home and all their energy is needed to keep body and soul together. Some young males will follow the young females to sea, thinking they might be missing out on something. They will eventually return, with the females, as impressive specimens, to while away their time over the long summer holiday, relaxing in the deep shady pools with the beautiful mature females. When the time comes, they will have no trouble seeing off the small brownies and will have their pick of the crop of female sea trout….. but they will often wonder if the long courtship and all that sea travel was really worthwhile. Size isn’t everything, after all.
On the richer rivers of the south and east, the expectations are entirely different. Here the brown trout are the aristocrats, the establishment. Life is very civilised: there is plenty of everything to go round and order is maintained by a strict hierarchy based on seniority. The younger trout are very respectful and almost always give way to their elders. The young males, however, like young males everywhere, generally think of only one thing - well, two things really….. food and sex - and can be a bit of a handful at times, especially at the back end of the year. The females are brought up to stay at home. Broadening of the horizons through travel is discouraged, although there will always be a few rebellious youngsters, usually female, often with unconventional family backgrounds, who leave home to go to sea - a case of "like mother, like daughter". They will return for the summer holidays and the Great October Orgy but will generally be shunned by the brown trout community, especially the local females who resent all the attention they get from the young males.
The wise old trout, though, are happy to see the comings and goings of these "silver tourists", as they are known locally. They remember the time of the Great Pollution when the whole river trout population was almost wiped out and only recovered through the valiant spawning effort of a few returning sea trout. They now see the emigration of the few young rebels as an insurance against any possible future domestic catastrophe.
John Gray has always been a keen angler, giving up the security of a teaching job in 1983 to open a tackle shop in Kilsyth, which he ran for twenty years.
Thoughts on game fish brown trout fishing, a pleasant recreation; salmon fishing, a bloody hard day’s work; sea trout fishing, a glorious obsession
Fondest Memory
Of a time when sea trout swam in our north western rivers and lochs.
John is now fascinated by computers and the power of the internet, and sees Fish Wild! as an example of the worldwide web at its very best. He is currently developing a new website, www.trout-salmon-fishing.com, which aims to provide information on wild brown trout, salmon and sea trout fishing opportunities in Scotland. He would be grateful for any information, which might be usefully added to the website, particularly about reasonably priced, publicly accessible fishing in Scotland. Fishing hotels, tackle shops and angling clubs are also invited to submit details for free inclusion. Readers will find contact details on the website.