I have a question - when ever I bring a fish back from some stocked lakes - albury in particular, the fish have small pebbles in their gut.

At first I assumed they ate them to aid digestion then recently had a horrible thought that maybe they eat them because natural food is scarce and they may look similar to the pellets they had at the fish farm - can anyone help and put my mind at rest

i think the reason you are seeing this is because aftre a trout has been stocked it must feel as if its food has been cut of so it starts the process of foraging for food on the bottom where it would expect to find natural food stuffs eg bloodworm, buzzer etc invarably it will pick up some small pebbles that it may think are food/pellets