New world record Brown ? 46.9lb

[ohanzee]

Catch that in a highland loch, and your standards will change!

Bert

I think we all know that it wouldn't end up like that in a natural environment.

 

[aenoon]

I think we all know that it wouldn't end up like that in a natural environment.

Natural environment is what we make it.
Look at some of Colins photos of huge trout, from lochs that historically only had half pounders!

Bert

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

Natural environment is what we make it.
Look at some of Colins photos of huge trout, from lochs that historically only had half pounders!

Bert

Just to clarify - the big trout from Arkaig and Lochy are ferox - have always been there and always been big - feed mostly on char - but you can catch the occasional one on an intermediate line and a Kate muddler or a goat's toe! However, the char may be benefitting from the presence of cages, and passing it on up the food chain.

The big trout from Loch Shiel come about from a change to the balance of seatrout and brown trout due to the sea cages reducing seatrout numbers and freshwater cages in the loch increasing nutrient levels for the increased numbers of stay-at-home brown trout. I don't know if this situation is even repeated anywhere else?

Even then, Mark Hirst reckons there have always been some big browns in Loch Shiel. It's just that I used to fish it in the 1970s, and back then a 1 pound brownie was a good one. Mark has personally had some absolute lumps off it in recent years - well into the teens. In the times he has taken some of us out, we have had several big browns up to 12 lb. He has seen what happens when they clean the smolt cages. A big roller machine pulls them up to clean them and masses of crud comes off them, and there are billions of sticklebacks bouncing out of it. Well, put 2 and 2 together... the bigger of the 2 large brownies I had in the times I was out with Mark on Shiel went 8 lb 12 oz, and I caught it on a 2 inch minkie. Match the hatch!

Col

 

[3lbgrayling]

Just to clarify - the big trout from Arkaig and Lochy are ferox - have always been there and always been big - feed mostly on char - but you can catch the occasional one on an intermediate line and a Kate muddler or a goat's toe! However, the char may be benefitting from the presence of cages, and passing it on up the food chain.

The big trout from Loch Shiel come about from a change to the balance of seatrout and brown trout due to the sea cages reducing seatrout numbers and freshwater cages in the loch increasing nutrient levels for the increased numbers of stay-at-home brown trout. I don't know if this situation is even repeated anywhere else?

Even then, Mark Hirst reckons there have always been some big browns in Loch Shiel. It's just that I used to fish it in the 1970s, and back then a 1 pound brownie was a good one. Mark has personally had some absolute lumps off it in recent years - well into the teens. In the times he has taken some of us out, we have had several big browns up to 12 lb. He has seen what happens when they clean the smolt cages. A big roller machine pulls them up to clean them and masses of crud comes off them, and there are billions of sticklebacks bouncing out of it. Well, put 2 and 2 together... the bigger of the 2 large brownies I had in the times I was out with Mark on Shiel went 8 lb 12 oz, and I caught it on a 2 inch minkie. Match the hatch!

Col

Back in the day.I won the Daily Record fish of the week.with a 3lb 2oz brown out of a local stream that trout averaged 1/2-3/4lb.It too had been working on a stickleback diet.it had dozens of the armour plated spikes in its belly.(supposed to protect the S/back from predators,failed miserably in the case of this trout)

Jim

 

[PaulD]

Catch that in a highland loch, and your standards will change!

Bert

If I caught that in a highland loch I'd be sorely tempted to give up fishing. It's a freak.

 

[Bourach]

Catch that in a highland loch, and your standards will change!

Bert

No they won’t. I fish for naturally fed, wild, indigenous fish nothing else hits the spot.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

Back in the day.I won the Daily Record fish of the week.with a 3lb 2oz brown out of a local stream that trout averaged 1/2-3/4lb.It too had been working on a stickleback diet.it had dozens of the armour plated spikes in its belly.(supposed to protect the S/back from predators,failed miserably in the case of this trout)

Jim

I mind the English Reservoir boys saying that they reckoned there are only really 2 food sources that allow trout to pack on the pounds at the fastest rate: Daphnia and fish.

Col

 

[easker1]

I still say that NZ fish is Trutta Lacustra, the Lake trout it looks like no Brownie I have ever caught,and doesn't compare with the pictures of Brownies that Col listed,and there are a lot of lochs round here that would only be boatable with a helicopter to take the boat ,it's why I do mostly bank fishing out of 27 lochs the club has only 3 have boats , the rest are high up and quite small , easker1

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

Trutta Lacustra, the Lake trout

No such species, Derek. The species is Salmo trutta. In geographical isolates, it can diverge into different morphs, such as the sonnaghan and gillaroo and ferox that breed true to type, plus this benthic type they have found in Loch Laidon. But those are all still Salmo trutta. The fish that were taken to New Zealand were Salmo trutta and they still are.

New Zealand brown trout

A lot of the time, lacustrine trout are simply brown trout living in a lake, as opposed to their brethren living in a river. Looks have nothing to do with species. The colouration of any specimen of Salmo trutta will be that best suited to its environment. If it is an open-water roamer from a lake that is large, shallow and sandy-bottomed, it will be silvery with light-scattering colouration and counter-shading... like a seatrout or Loch Leven trout or Loch Harray trout...

That's simply Salmo trutta, not 'Trutta lacustra' or anything else.



Your lacustrine Salmo trutta are the ones living in the lake.

That one in the OP looks like it has been living somewhere that gives optimum survival by light-scattering and counter-shading colouration. It's not a lot different from a Loch Leven roamer or some of the brownies you see coming off Rutland Water???

Col

 

[riogrand king]

I mind the English Reservoir boys saying that they reckoned there are only really 2 food sources that allow trout to pack on the pounds at the fastest rate: Daphnia and fish.

Col

Yep, with the addition of scuds that about covers it for natural conditions.
When humans start pumping designer fish food into the system the equation changes. That's what occurs in the Twizel canals (and for the stockies supplied to those English Reservoirs ). No need to get upset about the freakish results, just recognize why those NZ fish grow so large.

 

[Bourach]

[QUOTE="Cap'n Fishy, post: 2795334, member: 13

The big trout from Loch Shiel come about from a change to the balance of seatrout and brown trout due to the sea cages reducing seatrout numbers and freshwater cages in the loch increasing nutrient levels for the increased numbers of stay-at-home brown trout. I don't know if this situation is even repeated anywhere else?
[/QUOTE]

Short answer is yes. Loch Damph immediately springs to mind, however the situation is a little more complex when smolt cages a sited on the lochs. Aside from opportunistic fish taken advantage of feed that either misses or makes it way through the cages, you have the effects of eutrophication in what are mostly deep, dark oligotrophic waters. A change in water chemistry, however localised, will result in a change in the ecology.

What we are seeing is a disruption in the tropic structure of large lochs as a result of fish farming activity and large fish caught as a consequence shouldn’t be seen as much a trophy.

 

[ohanzee]

Natural environment is what we make it.

If we make it something else its no longer the natural environment.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

Short answer is yes. Loch Damph immediately springs to mind, however the situation is a little more complex when smolt cages a sited on the lochs. Aside from opportunistic fish taken advantage of feed that either misses or makes it way through the cages, you have the effects of eutrophication in what are mostly deep, dark oligotrophic waters. A change in water chemistry, however localised, will result in a change in the ecology.

For sure - that is what is happening on Shiel. I mentioned the sticklebacks a couple of posts back, but mentioned the overall increase in nutrients further back. There is a published paper (or it may have been a PhD thesis) on the eutrophication of Shiel - from bacteria and algae, up through zooplankton, insects, etc to fish.

What we are seeing is a disruption in the tropic structure of large lochs as a result of fish farming activity and large fish caught as a consequence shouldn’t be seen as much a trophy.

Aye well, I would much rather the cages were all removed, saltwater and fresh, and we got back to fishing for seatrout. But hey-ho... it's still a blummin' big challenge to go out on a 17 mile long loch and catch a 10 lb totally wild brown trout on intermediate line and wet fly. Plenty have tried and failed. I haven't had one myself yet.

Col

 

[Bourach]

Aye well, I would much rather the cages were all removed, saltwater and fresh, and we got back to fishing for seatrout. But hey-ho... it's still a blummin' big challenge to go out on a 17 mile long loch and catch a 10 lb totally wild brown trout on intermediate line and wet fly. Plenty have tried and failed. I haven't had one myself yet.

Col

I prefer the challenge of a 10lb total wild trout on a small loch on a floating line and a dry fly. Now that, my friend, is a challenge.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

I prefer the challenge of a 10lb total wild trout on a small loch on a floating line and a dry fly. Now that, my friend, is a challenge.

And how many times have you managed it?

Here's my best total wild brown trout off a small water on a floating line and a dry fly (size 12 Adams hopper)...

But overall, I prefer the challenge that a 17 mile long loch presents.

Col

 

[ohanzee]

But overall, I prefer the challenge that a 17 mile long loch presents.

Col

On a big loch you have to find the fish, on a small loch you have to find the rare loch that has something like that in it.

The only double figure trout I have ever seen was in a loch Bourach knows well, I spent 3 days and two nights on it and saw what looked to me like a double figure fish lunge partly out of the water to grab a frog, came home without a fish.

Unless there are two of them in there he caught it(insert 'damn it' smiley)

 

[Bourach]

Nice fish.

Not sure if I have managed it as I never weigh my fish.

Had a few just shy of 30” though.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

Had a few just shy of 30” though.

Means nothing to me.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

By the by, can I just say that this thread is quite a good example of how FFF threads can evolve from one thing into another...

OP - freakish brown trout caught in New Zealand...

... morphs into...

pissing contest between Scotsmen.

Jeezo... I wish I had better bladder control in my autumn years...

 

[thetrouttickler]

I think the distinction between a brown trout in its indigenous range, and one which is completely naturalised, because its forebears were stocked 150 years ago, is a shallow and ill-considered one. There is no difference whatsoever.