Primal drama in old starlight

Lamenting the loss of local angling expertise gleaned over the generations, Soldier Palmer ventures into the night in search of sea trout

- Palmer

Midnight in June and the river is swelling with rain from the day. The conditions are nearly perfect for a chance of a mighty sea trout in the pools below my house. Perhaps I’m over-egging the word ‘mighty’, particularly since the rod catch on the local river is far down on former years.

Sea trout have become a rarity and the few persistent survivors tend to weigh in at roughly a pound. This silvery finnock cut a small dash beside plaster casts of massive fish that hang above the optics in the local pub, but since sea trout have all but vanished from many of their former strongholds, we are simply glad to have them at all. Flushed and bulky with sea-going goodness, they fight like bears in the midsummer dark, even if they only measure 10in from nose to tail.

It has taken me a long time to learn about sea trout. As their numbers declined, many people lost interest in fishing after dark. It hardly seems worth it to wait all night for the chance of nothing, so a great deal of local angling knowledge is withering on the vine. If, by some incredible stroke of good fortune, sea trout were to return to their former numbers, it would take many years for us humans to rebuild the capacity to catch them again.

That necessary know-how was kept alive by practical use, but many of the wiliest old poachers have now given up the ghost. The survivors complain of rheumatism and there are not many youngsters willing to learn the trade. What I’ve learned, I’ve had to teach myself — and that has been a long, slow process.