MAX BLAKE: The mysterious trout

The title I am sure bring to mind some sort of semi-mythical pan-dimensional trout which flits around ending up in all sorts of water ways where it has not been seen before, before zooming off again to the next area. Not quite...

I introduce you to Midsummer Norton. A not terribly nice town in North Somerset, its residents are mainly yobs who like nothing more than riding their BMX’s around town and eating greasy fried pizzas. Now, I went there armed with my machete the other day to try and find a reptile shop that was reputed to be around here. I never found it, but I did spend some time looking into the stream which runs down the high street. It is only about 1ft deep, with no features at all other than the fact that some silly council planner has decided that a gently sloping normal stream is not good enough, and decided to make it run in steps. I wasn’t really expecting to see any life in its bare expanse, but I was to be pleasantly surprised.

Sticklebacks! Loads of them! I am not sure which species it was, but I expect that they were all three-spined. Very interesting, but I was not expecting to also see larger fish in the same stream, I had expected that they had all been fished out. Not so. We had a very unusual group of trout. They were a stunning yellow with black squiggly lines all over them which reminded me of a tiger trout. There were three in the stream, about 1ft long with big fat bellies, presumably from all the bread that they got given by the locals. The attached photo shows a trout with considerably less black dots and bars than the ones I saw.

The other trout was considerably larger than the others, about 1.5ft long. He was brown on top with a reddish belly and a slightly hooked jaw. Jon suggested it was a grayling, but I didn’t think the colour matched up, nor did I notice that the dorsal fin was unusual. If anyone has any idea what these “trout” were I would be most grateful!

NOTE: Jon and I have been chatting again, and he thinks it may be a Atlantic salmon (picture attached) with the hooked jaw and it’s size. I will have to go back and get a better look.