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.

GUEST BLOGGER COLIN HIGGINS: The whitefish saga

One of my favourite guest blogs over the last few weeks has been Colin Higgins from Yorkshire, who - incidentally - was the winner of the compy in January's `On the Track`.

Someone nameless - though not in the Lovecraftian sense - enquired about our native whitefishes so like Renfield to Jon’s unspeakable Count I bring news of the powan, gwyniad, skelly, pollan or more commonly Houting and Vendace for the master’s delectation.

Marked by the adipose fin, the fleshy protuberance between the dorsal and tail that divides social classes in the UK as well as fishy ones, the Houting and Vendace are of the sub-order Salmonoidei. They’re related to grayling, trout, salmon and charr; posh fish in other words, although whitefish do not attract anglers kitted out by Hardy of Alnwick, or indeed anglers of any persuasion in great numbers, fluff-chucker or bottom-fisher.

Why should these smallish, herring looking species detain the cryptozoologically inclined? Well it’s where they’re found. They’re assumed to be remnant populations of migratory stocks cut off by ice sheets leading to visual and taxonomic differences among their isolated populations.

Basically the Houting, or Powan, is found in Loch Lomond and Loch Eck while the similar Gwyniad and Skelly are known in Lake Bala in Wales and Haweswater, Ullswater and Red Tarn in the Lake District. The other partner in the Coregonus pairing, the Vendace, lives only in Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite and a tiny population in Mill Loch, near Lochmaben. Or so my sources say; further enquiry suggests they’ve followed the Castle Loch vendace and entirely disappeared from their last redoubt in Scotland due to nutrient enrichment.

Presumably given sufficient time, something the Lochmaben sewage works denied its Mill Loch victims, these population varieties would turn into distinct species. The whitefishes are now protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) and there are plans to re-introduce them to Scotland. I can contribute little folklorish to either fish (though some to its Scandanavian cousins) but would be pleased to hear from anyone who can, as it’s unlikely such a particular fish escaped the animistic embrace of our forbears.

Although a distinct species and a trouty looking one, while we’re discussing salmonids of deep lakes and lochs it’s worth mentioning the Charr for no better reason than its propensity to endure the abysmal deeps. In Ferox and Charr (1940) R. P. Hardie mentions a charr dredged from over 500ft in Loch Ness which lead Hugh Falkus to quip that if Nessie did exist, charr would make a substantial part of the monster’s diet as they are certainly abundant to 400ft.

In the Burbot blog I joked about whitefish yet proving to be the rarest native fish, an allusion that got a few pulses racing. It was nonetheless a conceit but if any of those Mill Loch vendace did escape the predations of Dumfrieshire sanitation, who knows?

The 9th trenche of bird related clippings from the Archive Project

Oll has been a busy little beaver and the latest set of scanned news clippings and other stuff from the Archiving Project is ready for you to download HERE should you want to..

This is the ninth and last trenche of bird related scans, which are all from Westcountry bird reports from the early 20th Century.

It is strange, but I haven't actually looked into our clippings archive boxes for years - some of them not since Alison (my first wife) cut them out and put them into the files in the first place about fifteen years ago, and I had forgotten that most of this stuff even existed.

"WATER BLACKFELLA": The story behind the picture

I have already posted this as a comment to the story about the unlikely Australian semi-aquatic BHM, but upon reflection it is too important a story to leave as a mere footnote, so I am republishing it as a post proper.
David Lee commented on the post about the "Water Blackfella?". He writes:

"A color version of this image has been passed off as a bigfoot photo for over a decade now. It seems to have fallen off the radar lately because it took me awhile to google up an example of it.

See this article here for a brief story of the hoax. "

Thank you for that, David.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

This is the latest `bigfoot` video to be doing the rounds. The YouTube "blurb" reads:

"Footage of The Beast Of Gum Hill while ATV riding on 04/05/09 at approximately 6:30pm. This is the 2nd time I have seen this creature/bigfoot called The Beast Of Gum Hill. This is the first time we managed to capture it on video. This is the first known video footage of the BOGH, there was a still photo taken in the early 80's that I remember seeing . The camera used was a cheap digital VuPoint 5.0 With waterproof case that I use while fiming my ATV rides. Local legend has talked about this non-aggressive, reclusive beast for a little over 100 years. The BOGH is around 7ft tall and guesstimated at 350 lbs. I have used the name The Beast of Gum Hill on my ATV videos as a tribute to the local legend."

The video is rampaging around the Internet like wildfire, but so far I have not been able to find out anything about where "Gum Hill" is, or the provenance of either the video or the person who took it. We eagerly await your comments.

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

Once more it’s time for the daily cryptozoology news digest via the CFZ daily news blog, but before all that Saturday is tune of the week day, so as you catch up with the news, kick back and listen to Ramblin’ Man by The Allman Brothers Band: http://www.last.fm/music/The+Allman+Brothers+Band/_/Ramblin%27+Man. Tidy, now for the news and a bad pun:

Slow worms delay building work
Judge orders feds to reconsider help for jaguar
Egg collected by Charles Darwin found at Cambridge University after 200 years
Easter Warning After Dog Scoffs 12 Eggs
And
Horse hairstyles are the mane attraction
I suppose you could call that ‘Horse’ couture.
.

NICK WALTERS LECTURE AT MICROCON 2009

As we said yesterday, from a cultural point of view, we have always been interested in the depictions of monsters and unknown animals in art. Following Richard Freeman's interview with Nick Walters, a Dr Who writer about his work combining the world's most popular science fiction TV show with cryptozoology, here is Nick's lecture from this year's Microcon - the Exeter University Science Fuction Association Convention.