Viking Lars | Saturday, 25 March 2023
Insignificant might be too strong a term, because in essence, I enjoy every fish I catch. But the small ones I think we’d all rather be without - not least for the sake of the fish. Every now and then it happens that even catching a small fish can save the day. A friend and I were fishing a small stream - one that I occasionally persuaded my dad to take me to when I was a kid.
The small stream can occasionally provide som decent trout fishing and we were there last fall. I fish it for nostalgic reasons and because it’s overgrown and presents a challenge as a fly fisher. It’s a beautiful river passing through both open farmland and forrests. It’s far from dense population, so the stretches through the forrest always offer lots of wildlife. The occasional owl, if you pause the fishing and look carefully, other predatory birds, ferrets if you stalk softly, woodpeckers, nightingale when you fish into the dark, the occasional fox in the dusk or early mornings, deer in the open fields and much, much more. I appreciate this (almost) as much as the fishing.
The day was almost over and my friend and I just wanted to try our luck (skills?) in two specific spots that sometimes hold a trout or two. Once of them did - although just a small one. However this particular small sea trout was a very welcome catch. Supporting stocking of the river has been carried our for many years, but stopped 4-5 years ago. Not that the population of trout doesn’t need it, but mainly for economical reasons. The current population of trout isn’t impressive, but it seems to be holding, so with more habitat restoration, I think the river will be fine in years to come.
It wasn’t a big surprise as such, because we knew the river was producing wild trout, but young trout hasn’t really been seen for a few years. They are there, I’m sure and they’d probably show up in decent numbers if the rivers was electrofished. But it hasn’t been and probably won’t be.
This little sea trout is just a smolt, meaning two years old and has migrated to the sea in the spring. They usually stay there for at least a year before coming back to spawn. We weren’t far from where the river meets the sea, so this one was probably just visiting.
We had caught a few bigger trout earlier int he day (and lost a few too - always bigger ones, of course), but this little, tangible evidence that succesful spawning is going on was a nice surprise. As it happened, this was the trout we were talking about when we drove back.
What I’m trying to convey is simply that there’s always a bigger perspective and I find that it’s important to keep an eye on it. Without breaking out the large violin orchestra, it’s how we improve the state of things.
Have a great weekend,
Lars