THE BROWN TROUT - Salmo trutta fario
The Brown Trout is native to Britain and is easily recognised, with a golden brown body, dark brown spots on its side and on its back and dorsal fin, with some red spots thrown in for colour. Make this fish stunning in its beauty and a highly prized by the game angler.
Like other members of the salmon family, the brown trout has a small spineless adipose fin between the spined dorsal and tail fins.
The brown trout needs cool highly oxygenated water to thrive, and can normally be found in the upper reaches of the rivers, chalk streams and in lakes and lochs. The brown trout is abundant all over the United Kingdom due to artificial stocking for the angler. The brown trout is a solitary fish and will find a lie were here it will hold up, moving from side to side as food is bought down with the flow never having to work to hard for its next meal, though still water trout have to work a bit harder to find there food as there is no flow to bring it to them.
The brown trout need shallow flowing water to spawn, and those residing in lakes and lochs will move up into the feeder streams to spawn. Between November and February is when the brown trout spawns, with the female fish digging a hollow in the gravel bed. Here she will lay her eggs and the male will then fertilize them. After fertilization the female covers the eggs with gravel, and then within a few weeks the eggs hatch. At first they feed on there yoke sack moving on to small water creatures, then at abut five months old they move onto the same food as the parents, this being nymphs, fly’s and other creatures that are bought down with the flow.
