Torch - Shy Seatrout ???

[daiben]

An observation made by an angler who recently posted on social media has reminded me of what I also experienced whilst returning from a nowadays rare but recent night fishing session. Wading across the smooth tail end of a pool which ran into fast water, and shining my hand held torch on the riverbed, the beam descended on a pod of about half a dozen small seatrout holding station in the steady flow and spread out. Despite the disturbance of my wading and the torch beam on them, the fish just held position. I was almost walking amongst them and still they held their position. So are seatrout really bothered by light on the riverbank from flashing head torches etc.

[henben]

Who can tell? Not me, after more than 65 years fishing for them, on the Towy. I have tried talking to them but no success so far.

I was however always led to believe that best practice was to keep light off the river. Having said that I do also believe that a bright light was used to catch salmon and seatrout using dubious methods!

Perhaps there is a different behaviour pattern of larger sewin in June/July compared to that of small sewin in September.

As I said, who can tell?

[daiben]

Interesting and recent underwater study of Sea Trout here, plus resulting comments and replies:-

www.facebook.com/watch?v=528998438399574