Keeping an eye on the Isle of Mull’s Salmo Trutta

I was surprised to learn this from my keen fly fishing stepfather some years ago. 

The sea trout, is simply a brown trout that has decided to go or remain in the sea, possibly because there is more food. 

Much like an otter born and raised inland, in fresh water, the sea trout will find the sea and lives there for a number of years, fattening itself up and becoming more silvery like a salmon, and then, like a salmon, it returns to the river it came from to spawn.

My stepfather used to catch the tiny little brown trout in the wee burns on Mull and take them up and release them in some of the hill lochs on Pennyghael estate. 

The tiny trout, which would never really grow more than a quarter of a pound in the streams, would then become relative giants due to their larger and more rich environment. 

I have often wondered how did brown trout get into the streams above waterfalls etc. 

Well, if you ask about online or through word of mouth, it is believed that eggs have, over time, been caught up on birds or frogs legs and have been transported like this to upper inaccessible reaches of burns etc. 

What my stepfather did makes far more sense to me though. 

Folk back in the olden days, when folk lived sustainably and responsibly, it makes perfect sense that they would try and encourage food to grow in every environment they could, especially if it meant tiny fish would grow ten times their size. A form of early fish farming.

Karen Carragher a local wildlife enthusiast recently posted a picture on the Mull Nature Watch group on Facebook of some small cylindrical balls in a tiny stream entering a wee loch here on Mull. Trout eggs. 

I was a teenager when I last saw trout spawning. The late great Jimmy MacKeand from Scoor, something of an adopted grandfather figure for me, used to use me as an extra sheep dog to help Moss do his work, and also taught me how to catch the wee brown trout that lived in all of Mull’s rivers large and small. 

He took me to see brown trout spawning at a site he obviously knew well. 

There they were, the hen and cock fish making their nest, known as a redd, in the gravel. The hen fish laying her eggs and the cock going over them wafting his tail and sperm to fertilise them. I was mesmerised.

 
When the eggs are laid in the groove in the gravel they had made, the hen fish then wafted here tail and flicked gravel back into the groove to cover the eggs so they do not get eaten by dippers or other likely predators.

I was keen to see this wildlife spectacle again, so went to check out the site Karen shared privately with me. 

Due to Karen’s detailed directions I did find the trout eggs, and although Karen had seen the fish there that morning, there was no sign of them now. 

There was an otter spraint spot on a mossy rock in the middle of the burn right beside the eggs though. They know. 

A typical brown trout is said to lay around 2,000 eggs, although our tiny brownies in the streams and lochs here are likely to lay a lot less.

Now, during the brown trout breeding season, it is illegal to fish them, obviously to allow these fish to breed and restock rivers and lochs. But come the fishing season, I for one will be back out to compete with the otters to make a yummy meal or two out of these delicious fish.