As trusty as a brown trout

In the first of a new series celebrating our best-loved piscine species, COUNTRY LIFE’s fishing correspondent salutes the elegant and reputedly magical Salmo trutta

- David Profumo

IHAVE been fascinated by fish for more than six decades and this column will celebrate the variety and vitality of some of Britain's most intriguing species, from fresh water and salt. Probably my favourite is our native brown trout (Salmo trutta), wide-spread and of an archetypal appearance—ask a child to draw a fish shape and it is likely to be truttaceous. This is a charming, quick-silver creature, with a certain impishness.

The wild brownie enjoys many variations on a theme when it comes to colouration; size and livery vary according to habitat. Specimens from peaty water are often dark, such as those mahogany troutlings from moorland becks, whereas a pampered chalk-country cousin may be butter-bellied with flanks like cutlery gleaming through golden syrup. Their bodies are smutted with spots (sometimes cruciform), some prinked with rosehip stipples, with a nacreous overwash. The trout is graceful, even chic—stocked fish may be less so.

‘The Ainu believed the world was balanced on a cosmic trout’