i have never caught a fish under 4lb that was white or very light pink ... on the Corrib ... due to the fact it primarily eats... nymph / fly and shrimps... not fish....this is different in other lakes ....different food source.... fish feed on the food that is most plentiful to them... as if you saw in one of my videos a salmon in a lake will feed on mayfly for days if the food is plentiful and does not expend energy to get the food... some people think salmon don’t feed in fresh water... i beg to differ.....

is ferox due to genetics? i think i might be mistaken on this one, sure im sure you can all help me out....LOL.... if a fish comes from a different lake and food source... they do have a different genetic history... so in the most part i would think the term ferox is different for different lakes with different food source ......

when a fish on the Corrib get big... it needs to add regular extra food to the menu ... i.e - fish ... i.e now its gone ferox ... but in other lakes they are ferox from a very small size... due to lack of other plentyfull food... also some lakes are huge so different food souces in different parts of it.....

i have come to the above conclusion as it is very hard to differentiate primary food habits..over a full long life of a fish ... unless the flesh goes red... ... and yes trout that are not ferox do eat fish.... but not much .. so its not genetic.. its to do with primary food availability................. What do you think??????

I think that it is generally understood that ferox are born ferox and breed true to type. They turn to a piscivorous diet at an early stage and traditionally exist in deep lakes with a char population which is a major food source. To say that a trout has "gone ferox" is not correct, although they may have turned cannibal or substantially piscivorous this does not make them a ferox. If they are a ferox they were always a ferox.

Of course other trout occasionally eat fish but this does not make them a ferox either and of course not all big trout are ferox, e.g the recent 15lb Sheelin fish.

__________________
“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary

Check out the book by Ronnie Greer, "Ferox trout and Arctic charr" I think is the title.
He goes to great lengths to explain the situation. As sewinbasher says ferox are ferox, and while not a seperate species they have seperate habits.
For one they generally spawn in the OUTLET of the big lochs they live in and not the upper catchment areas normally associated with brownies.

Also salmon will appear to feed in freshwater, taking mayfly as you say, but they do not digest the food and gain no energy from it.

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It is in truth not glory,nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting,but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life.(Declaration of Arbroath, 1320)

as i said ... different location means different food..means different feeding patterns .....and the fish has a different genetics if it comes from a different lake... fish only feed on the easiest food available... if they had the choice they would rather live in a lake with plenty of shrimp and nymphs etc....

where did you come up with the digestion thing... so your saying just cus a fish swam into fresh water.... he can turn off his digestion... even though his belly is bursting with mayfly and the ones that were in there longer are poooo....as in digested....

---------- Post added at 01:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:34 AM ----------

sounds like Ronnie .. went to a Lake / location where there is limited food... and the reason the fish spawn in the Lough outlet is because the water is good and the outlet has oxygen for the eggs.... fish always do what is easiest for them,.... and if he is talking about outlet ... and not inlet the lake does not have sufficient inlet rivers... suggesting it is a high lake.... and cold... little food

if you cut open the sheelin trout you would find its flesh light-pink or white... and was it not cought by someone fishing for pike? .. i suggest that the general understanding of a ferox trout is wrong, and it is only to do with size of fish and location and primary food source...

the Sheelin fish was a female and looked ok.... if it was a male and looked ugly people would say its ferox... but males are always a bit skinnier than females ...

by the way what is the definition of ferox?????? and i am not asking you to go to a fishing book... as that is only some old school fishermans idea... of what it is.....

In a study of Lough Melvin, biologists from the Queen's University, Belfast showed that the ferox trout is genetically different from the other forms of trout that inhabit that lake. They spawn with other ferox trout in separate streams from the other trout that live there. Furthermore, Andrew Ferguson and his co-workers showed that it is possible to identify, by genetic finger-printing, tiny ferox trout that may superficially resemble ordinary brown trout. On these grounds Ferguson argued, in the Went Memorial Lecture given to the Royal Dublin Society on 20 November 1985, that the ferox in Melvin were a full species in their own right that had evolved from a single colonisation of the lough following the last Ice Age.

If ferox are merely overgrown carnivorous trout, why do some trout become fish-eaters and grow to great age and size while the vast majority do not?

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Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
YOU DONT NEED EYES TO SEE YOU NEED VISION

Ronnies only a founder member of the Ferox 85 group and one of the foremost authorities on the subject.....what does he know eh....

Aye mate, sounds like Ronnie could learn a few things from the new Irish master.

__________________

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
YOU DONT NEED EYES TO SEE YOU NEED VISION

I'm sorry but you are a mile off in what you think about ferox and it is you who are barking up the wrong tree based on very little evidence or science and it's frankly a bit foolish to start challenging Ron Greer who is possibly the UK's leading expert on ferox with your not very credible arguments.

There are generally thought to be no ferox in Sheelin and although undoutedly some Sheelin browns do occasionally or even substantially feed on fish it doesn't make them a ferox. Most Sheelin fish, even the big ones are primarily insectivorous and whether a fish is a ferox or not is not related to its size or flesh colour. Flesh colour is normally a reflection of diet and pink flesh is a result of eating food like snails and shrimps that contain carotene. You can catch browns from the same pool in a river that are the same size and they will have different flesh colour because of different diets. The fact that a fish has been eating fish does not make it a ferox and to describe kypey large male brown trout as ferox is incorrect unless they are genetically ferox.

Ferox do not spawn in a certain place in just one lake, they spawn in different areas anywhere where they occur, its a bit like spring salmon on some rivers using a certain tributary to spawn whilst grilse and autumn salmon spawn in other places. The fact that they spawn in the same place means that they breed true to type and this is also true of ferox that breed in a different area to other brown trout in the system.

In Lough Melvin there are several distinct types of brown trout and they are recognisable from each other, they feed in different places and on different food, one of the types is ferox, the others include gillaroo and sonaghan.

The definition of a ferox is probably best stated as a type of brown trout that had ferox parents. The characteristics of a ferox are that they are piscivorous from an early age and are generally found in deep glacial lakes that contain populations of char and or whitefish.

Why salmon take food into their mouths in freshwater is still not really understood but salmon, and to a lesser extent sea trout, do stop feeding for sustenance once they enter freshwater and this is demonstrated by the fact that virtually no salmon caught in freshwater will have any food in its gut. They do however take items of food or that are suggestive of food into their mouths from time to time. Any salmon that has food in it's gut is very much an exception and should be regarded as such. The exception may be kelts that perhaps do start feeding on their way back down to the sea.

__________________
“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary

as a fish from birth is stuck in a lake, with a specific diet... the lakes spacific food source... does that not determine what they eat?

can anyone show me a photo of a fish of 2lb, Trout that is ferox. from Sheline or the corrib or any other lake that has lots of shrimp nymph and fly etc and also tons of fish...

now im not talking about a fish the length of a healthy 4lb and is now very skinny lol as that fish lost weight due to diet and hunting pattern.... after fish...