Trout streams

[Tengu]

One of the many interesting things in Cornwall is the trout streams.

Any small piddle will have brown trout in it.

In Hinds `Days in Cornwall` he describes trout fishing in Lamorna. (A stream a non athletic person can jump over.) He erronously insists in using a fly...Lamorna valley is heavily wooded. Much tangles and hillarity ensue.

The two streams running though Perranporth are bigger and have trout up to a foot long.

But these trout have an unusual friend.

Watching the fish I saw a movement, just a movement as it was perfectly cammoflaged.

It was a half sized plaice...Not unknown from fresh water.

This fish had probably arrived as a fry stuck to a gulls foot.

Like as not it will end it in the sea in the winter floods...but will it survive the salt?

 

[Robson Valley]

It's survival may be a possibility. I recall that some species of aquarium fish are wild types, captured in salt water.
Don't forget the shift that young salmon make in their journey into the sea. Kokanee are landlocked Sockeye salmon.
We have anandromous rainbow trout (aka "steelhead") that regularly make the run back and forth to spawn in fresh water.

I've visited those little streams in the coastal mountians of British Columbia. Flowing through gloomy wet jungles.
I'll carry a block of some white cheese. Break off pea-sized bits and flick them into the water.
Sometimes, I see them sink to the bottom to rest on the gravel.
Other times, the cheese begins to sink and then disappears!
Far to dark at noon to see the fish without a #12 hook in the next piece of cheese.

 

[Trencakey]

100% sure it was a Plaice ? Flounder have been known to run up the Perran streams.

 

[Tengu]

I didnt ask it.

Plaice have been found in freshwater, havent they?

 

[Uilleachan]

Yeah, not uncommon for flatties to swim up rivers and hang around for a bit.

 

[Trencakey]

I didnt ask it.

Plaice have been found in freshwater, havent they?

Yes But Flounder seem to prefer the fresh water more than Plaice.

 

[Drain Bamaged]

I have fished in (and indeed have won) more than one winter league match in which Flatties which would not normally count have been weighed in simply because they were the only things caught. These matches were at Collingham and Cromwell Weir on the tidal River Trent about 50 miles from the sea.....though they were referred to as Dabs, Plaice, Soles, and just about every other known flatfish on the planet they were always Flounder, that is not to say that other species do not venture up into fresh water but these (or at least everyone of them I ever saw) where Flounder. I won one match with a very low weight of just over 3LB and that consisted of 9 flounder all caught on the tail of a worm cast out on a ledger and slowing twitched back in. When you see them on the gravel in the shallow water of the Trent they can vary in size, the smallest being similar to a 2p coin up to about 10oz (or a small dinner plate) I have never seen anything bigger than that at that distance from the sea though I have caught bigger in the Stainforth Canal (maybe 20 from salt water) and have had one getting on for 2LB from Tetney Lock maybe a mile from the sea.....it seems as they mature they venture back towards the sea. Quite a few of the ponds along the Humber Banks contain Flatties that have ended up in there as the result of exceptional tides and they apparently live for many years in fresh water.

What is quite surprising, the ones that end up in ponds as a result of big tides apparently go from salt straight to fresh with no time to adjust. Sea Trout, Salmon, Eels etc. get a chance to adjust by going through the 'brackish stage'

D.B.

 

[rorymax]

I found your post interesting Drain Bamaged, I've found flounder in lightly brackish water up here in Scotland, but never far upstream in purely freshwater, I've learned something new today.

Cheers for that.

rorymax

 

[Tengu]

Me too.

And I saw another flattie in the stream last night.

Unfortunatley a duck had caught it and was making a silly show trying to swallow it.

Duck bills and small flatfish dont fit.

 

[Drain Bamaged]

Tengu, in response to your comment about the duck, I sat today watching the Carp and Rudd spawning (yet again) and patrolling long the reeds amidst all the splashing and thrashing was a lone male Swan who dropped in several weeks ago and I allowed to stay. I actually saw something I have never witnessed before and that was a Swan deliberately hunting fish, I have seen them take an injured or recently dead fish off the surface when it's drifted literally under their 'nose' but this thing was actively stalking them. Each one it got was simply smashed on the surface and then it took and ate the guts leaving the body to drift to shore or for the Seagulls to take. I fished out a couple of the corpses to examine them, there have been numerous times when I have put out Mink traps (unsuccessfully) because I have found similar corpses on the bank and I now wonder if this is not such an uncommon occurrence.

D.B.

 

[Uilleachan]

The river sheil in glen sheil (kintail), has a loch in it's lower reaches that's probably 8m to 10m above sea level and about 400m to 500m from it's confluence with the sea (loch duich). Flounders and other flat fish are sometimes caught from that loch.

The river sheil's 400m to 500m between the loch and the sea isn't a lazy meandering flow so those flatties must be able to go some.