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dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46192
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Nov 26, 06 6:00 pm Post subject:
well oxygenated ,a healthy food chain . not too fussy brownies but a natural stream or river rather than a channelled one helps . deep pools and tight flows with some quiet areas for spawning seem popular with them.

Gus

Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Posts: 38
Location: scottish borders

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 06 9:14 pm Post subject:

The problems with the rainbow trout that we can all catch at our nearest put and take fishery are the price and the quality.

I'm sure plenty of board readers will have shied away from the hideous looking clingwrapped rainbow trout on display at the supermarket. Unfortunately the ones you'll catch at a fishery are fed the same crap at the same fish farm - it's just that they get to swim around a lake for a few days before you pay treble the price for catching and cleaning them yourself.

Another problem (ecologically speaking) is the food itself. Farmed fish are fed on high protein pellets made from wild fish caught at sea in industrial quantities. For every five tons of wild fish removed from the sea, the manufacturers manage to produce one ton of fish food, i.e. an 80% loss to the biomass. Then they add asbestos to the food to stop it catching fire when stored in large quantities, and dye to make the fish flesh a more 'natural' colour. Mmmmmm, nice!

Rainbows are overfed in fish farms, and are genetically altered to become 'triploid' i.e females unable to produce eggs so they grow at an accelarated rate, and this usually means that at least for the first year of their (drastically shortened) lives, rainbow trout have a cardio-circulatory system that is unable to supply their grossly overweight bodies with enough oxygenated blood. That's why you don't get much of a pull from them when you catch 'em on anything other than the lightest of flyfishing gear. They are the lardy couch potatoes of the fish world, as opposed to wild brown trout, sea-trout and salmon who are olympic athletes by comparison, and in the twelve years since I was first informed of what they eat (ergo what they have in their flesh) I haven't eaten a single rainbow trout!

Bodger

Joined: 23 May 2006
Posts: 13524

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 06 10:37 am Post subject:
Gus is spot on right.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46192
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 06 6:40 pm Post subject:

hard to beat the flavour of a brownie from a peat or chalk stream and stock pond fishing is like shooting caged lions.
i find most shop fish are rather too long dead ,even at the seaside most will have been airside for at least 12 hours .
feeding pond fish is always wasteful unless they are veggie fish and they can mostly be fed with "leftovers " like monastic carp .
feeding flesh to make flesh is daft (sand eel soup is quite nice ) and pond rainbows are pasty things ,wild ones are very different being both textured well ,good flavoured and if thats your bag an interesting catch as they can be a bit vigourous when hooked .
even from the same water i prefer brownies .
roll on april

cos i was poorly they got a set aside this year so there should be some fat ones in there next season .

leebu

Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Posts: 418
Location: east yorkshire

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 06 9:51 pm Post subject:

I would agree with everything posted by Gus however, unfortunately farmed fish may be the only way forward in terms of eating fish in future given the depleted stocks.

Although organically farmed and fed on sustainable food sources of course..

Having said that most of the trout around here that's in rivers and canals are stock fish that have escaped (or their parents did!) and taste very nice- even the ones from the canal. I don't think it takes too long in running water with wild food sources to give fish their natural sleekness and flavour. I still think rainbow trout are pound for pound the hardest fighting fish I've ever caught...but then I've only ever caught one brownie and he was a tiddler.

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 8:56 am Post subject:

If I was to stock a lake or a mill pond then I'd not be buying in fish food! If possible I might supplement their food with things I could grow myself but the main idea would be to produce a habitat where the fish would live naturally. I would have to ensure there's nothing rare that would be wiped out by the fish of course. I would also not expect to farm and sell trout but to have somewhere where friends and family could do a spot of fishing and have something different for the pot.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46192
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 9:46 am Post subject:
trout are carnivores ,cannibals if they can find littler ones or if they are a bit peckish they can be quite ambitious . carp may be better for a "natural pond with suppliments and not using high protien pellets

Silas

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 6848
Location: Staffordshire

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 9:53 am Post subject:
Pretty well put me of trout now Shame, I like a nice trout now and again.

Bodger

Joined: 23 May 2006
Posts: 13524

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 10:29 am Post subject:
Silas I have a mate who refuses to eat Sea bass. It stems from the day that his brother caught a 10lb er down in South Wales and he reckons that it puked up a small kitten

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46192
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 10:39 am Post subject:
not a problem twice i suspect or are welsh cats aquatic ?,plenty of rain for practice i heared a tale of a trawlerman who lost his false teeth over the side and got them back from a cod a few months later ,quick scrub in sterident ,good as new must try new bait

Gus

Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Posts: 38
Location: scottish borders

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 11:33 am Post subject:

Silas, don't let it put you off trout - wild brownies are one of the most delicious and nutritious things you'll ever add to your diet. And they are most certainly a substainable resource!

The only time I've balked at eating a sea bass was an occasion some years ago, when after catching two beauties in an estuary and seeing plenty more splashing around the same pile of flotsam, I got close enough to realise that it wasn't flotsam, but a decaying Alsation carcass. They were gorging themselves on bits of rotting dog!! I gave those two away and settled for a bag of chips on the way home!

doctoral

Joined: 19 Oct 2006
Posts: 697
Location: Now in Surrey ... I need a good avatar

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 6:35 pm Post subject:
I would have gutted them and ate them - no probs.

leebu

Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Posts: 418
Location: east yorkshire

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 6:42 pm Post subject:

Gus wrote:

I got close enough to realise that it wasn't flotsam, but a decaying Alsation carcass. They were gorging themselves on bits of rotting dog!! I gave those two away and settled for a bag of chips on the way home!

Which is disgusting but surely not that different to what fish usually eat- I always assumed the reason why maggots are such a good bait is that they occur naturally in their diet from corpes of dead animals, rabbits, foxes, livestock, birds etc that find their way into the river. Now i'm putting myself off

doctoral

Joined: 19 Oct 2006
Posts: 697
Location: Now in Surrey ... I need a good avatar

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 06 7:06 pm Post subject:
Exactly - we catch them with maggots and who knows what else they ate before we got there - maybe I just don't associate thoughts about my food with my food - if I did, there would be too many unsavoury things to eat ... saw what I thought was a good road-kill today, but the pheasant had been smashed in the side, not the head ... I won't carry on just in case I put myself off ...

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46192
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 06 4:17 pm Post subject:

wriggly things of any sort will get trout interested ,i have moral squeemishness about live baiting with fry (legal issues as well on most waters )but it works best ,followed by worm ,maggot ,assorted invertibrate critters , anything yellow (it looks like trout fry to them so even sweetcorn works although they are carnivores ) flys and lures are bottom of my list for trout bait .
ps nowt wrong with mashed roadkill so long as one seperates meat from the bits and it is unlikly to be left long enough by the carrion eaters to go rotten

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