Taking stock of your little trout

Mike Swan outlines the pros and cons you must consider when putting trout in a river

- Mike Swan

I have seen the scenario many times — a lovely little babbling brook, with a nice head of small trout, but nothing much over a few ounces in weight. The immediate response for someone who wants to improve the fishing potential is to suggest stocking it with some bigger fish. But hang on a moment.

If the nature of the stream is that it will only sustain wild trout up to 20cm or 25cm long, why would you expect bigger stockies to do well? If the cunning little natives can just about eke out a living, why should big, tame fish prosper?

The truth is that stocked trout almost always lose condition from the moment they are put in. Having been selected for their growth potential and fed what amounts to an unlimited supply of pellets, they are programmed to grow way faster than nature can generally sustain. Length extension may well carry on, but the body grows slimmer at the same time.

This is illustrated especially strongly in early spring, when the odd stockie that has survived the winter gets caught and turns out to be all head and tail, with a body hardly thicker than an eel. Being thin and weak, it gives up without much struggle and tastes pretty awful if you are daft enough to try.

Please don’t think such a fish will recover during the summer. Tap it on the head and feed it to the cat before it consumes any more of the river’s production.

Many rivers are stocked and provide excellent fly-fishing. I have been lucky enough to have great fun in many different places. I have even dabbled in stocking a small section of a chalk stream near GWCT HQ, but I do advise thinking twice for a small personal fishery.