After fly fishing for several months now, I believe that I have developed a good practice of catch and release etc but today I had a shock when I went to remove the fly from the trout’s mouth and I was…what can only be described as blasted…with fish eggs all over my head and clothes.. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The question is, is that fish likely to be damaged? Does this happen often? And has anybody else had this experience?

They don’t teach you this sort of stuff in the books….

IT used to be a regular occurrence when fishery owners used to stock diploid rainbows in winter. you used to see piles of spawn all down the lakeside. Now most stock fish are trips this doesnt happen, but i suppose from time to time the odd diploid still goes in.

The fish you caught wasnt spawning though, it would have been growing the eggs in preparation of spawning. when the fish is ready, only the slightest touch of the flank can release the spawn. If it was a rainbow, the eggs would probably eventually have been re-absorbed in a lake environment.

If it was a wild fish, it does seem late for spawning though.

Would be interesting to know if this fish was a Rainbow Trout - or - A Brown Trout? Also was it caught on a Lake/Reservoir - or - River? Fish a late returning to normal feeding habits this season!

How did it end up on your head if you were removing the hook?

You are unlikely to have damaged the fish - more likely done her some good. At this time of year the eggs are probably over-ripe and unlikely to have been much good for reproducing anyway. When I was farming them we used to strip out the eggs from any ripe hen fish when we came across them during netting and handling - it allowed the fish to get on with their lives and get back to growing muscle instead of eggs . The fish was probably glad to get rid of that "bloated feeling"

StickMan

Hi Everyone.

The fish was a rainbow from a commercial fishery.

Scotty9: I knelt down low so that I could see the hook and as I picked the fish up, the eggs shot out like a pressure washer.

Thanks for the information chaps.

If you thought that was an unpleasant experience, you should have been around in the 1970s and early 80s when we also used to catch male rainbows in pre-spawning trim. Typically they would be as black as your grandfather's hat, slimy, squirting milt everywhere , and not even fit to feed the cat. Thank goodness for triploids !

__________________
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." - German proverb
JH based near Southampton

Many of the rainbows on our reservoir have been shedding eggs of late. I thought those days were over and they only stocked with triploids now. Could it be that these fish are cheaper to buy? Our last stocking also contained many fish with badly worn fins.

__________________
*
How poor a thing, sometimes I find,
Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

~~*~~~~~
*****©(

There is not one fish farm that can produce 100% triploid fish, they are getting very good at it & getting better all the time.

The farms that are using pressure vessels are getting the best results.

Its is therefore likely at this time of year an overwintered fish may have eggs in them but they will only be a very small %.

Ifor

__________________
www.flyfishthornton.co.uk
www.flyfishforemark.co.uk
Member Fishery: Stillwater Game Fisheries Association www.troutfisheries.co.uk

Any overwintered fish that are showing spawn now would probably have looked 'normal' last year when they were stocked so it would have been almost impossible to tell a triploid from a diploid one then. If there are newly stocked fish showing spawn then the farmer must have known about it (the eggs are shed when netting ripe fish) and 'should' have removed them or reduced the price.

Fish that are 'fin perfect' will nearly always cost quite a bit more than those with damaged fins. There is no machine capable of sorting good fins from bad so the fish have to be hand-sorted, which takes a lot of time. Fortunately, the firm I worked for sold most of the fish for the table market so we could fillet the fish with poor fins and tails and keep the best ones for restocking. If a farm is producing only restocking fish they need to be able to sell the less than perfect ones somewhere - maybe you had a batch of those but they should have been cheaper than perfect ones.

Some very good farms can produce nearly all perfect fish but they have to give them more pond space so the fins don't get damaged - this means they can grow fewer fish so again - they cost more.

It has been a bad couple of years for fish farmers because of increased feed prices and all the problems of the recession - don't be too hard on them if you find a few corners are being cut right now - I know of at least one farm that went bust recently.

StickMan