Trout tickling ~ by Ron

Please investigate the claim that women and their pheromones make them more effective in the art of trout tickling.

Yes, I’ve heard that women make better anglers for that reason.

@ 2 previous posters: You dont think you are being sexist? Fact is that most anglers are men and always have been men. Pheromones from any mammal, would not be effective on a fish as they communicate with very different chemical signals. Let the statistics speak for themselves and stop trying to make everything into a gender struggle.
On a side-note I have heard that womens menses attracts bears.

Bubba:

How exactly were the two first posts being sexist? I believe it was you that began the “gender stuggle” with your reply.

What fun!

I used to catch lots of trout by hand as a boy, and haven’t given up yet. The method described works, but limits you to finding and going for one trout at a time. Try looking in shallower water (up to 12 inches deep), under all the flat rocks. and where water plunges down a level (little waterfall plunge pools). If there are trout in there you can catch them and haul them out easily, unharmed. Put them back if they’re undersized (8 inches usually, check with your local water authority in England and Wales.) Handy for me, the span between my thumb and small finger ends is exactly 8 inches. Wear an old wool pullover: it keeps you warm even if you’re wet, and I once got a small trout because it swam past my hand and up my sleeve!

To kill the trout, tap the back of its head smartly on the rock you pulled it from – it dies instantly.

You can also catch eels this way – twice the protein of beef, and good to eat if over 14 inches long. (I smoke them over oak chippings along with mackerel). You need a knife to kill them, or they suffer: blade tip in the brain, and sever the spinal cord where the fin ends under the fish (the vent i.e. anus) as they have an extra conglomeration of nerves there that help them control the tail.

Duncan
(33 years catching other people’s trout by hand or with rod and line. Best hand catch – 3 pound sea-trout in 6 feet of water! I put my left-hand index finger in its mouth, and right hand round its tail, and kicked like mad to keep above water and get to shore. My Mother was very surprised, and said “Well, that’s tea sorted!”).

As a yougster (late 1940’s early 50’s) I too used to ‘tickle’ trout in the river/stream that ran in front of my home. I was reasonably succesful but when out to really impress, we (our little gang)would go up stream a little way. There was a Sheep Dip fed by a pipe from higher up stream. We would shut the outlet draining valve in the dipping pool, open up the inlet valve from the stream and leave it a few days. On our return we would reverse the proceedure, draining the pool slowly. You would be amazed how many trout would be there. We would select the ‘best’ release the rest, go home and accept the praise for our skill at tickling! This always took place out of the dipping season of course. However,my family eventually moved far away, but on a re-visit to my old home to visit neighbours, I was overjoyed to find I could still tickle and catch a fish. Unfortunately I was dressed in my best clothes – my mother was far from please when I walked in, proud of my catch but oblivious to the state I was in. Happy days! Mel.

Hi All what fun! Sounds like you get more sucess than I do on the fly. Does anybody stock their lakes or ponds with Trout? If so what do you do.

Sounds fun. I would like to try it.

I doubt if it is legal??

Roy

Roy is correct, it is currently ilegal in the UK,in most cases, as it is considered to be poaching. You need a licience to catch fish and you wont get one for this method.

Well isn’t it amazing that something as skillful and fun as tickling trout is illegal. In a time where green is best just think how much energy goes into making a fishing rod, reel, hooks, fishing line, tackle box, waders the list goes on and on. Then there is the licensing department and fisheries that do a marvelous job and would be better served doing other things than stopping parents and their kids learning the art of Trout Tickling. Well you know what they say about common sense….It’s not very common. I recently was chatting with some friends over lunch and the subject of trout tickling came up and they thought it was a great joke and had never heard of it before in their life? They thought I was having a lend of them. Jokingly comparing that method of fishing with Ernie from sesame streets method of catching fish by saying here fishy fishy fishy and they jumped on his boat. As funny as that was it took quite a bit of convincing to prove to them that tickling trout was true.

I used to tickle trout when I was a boy and it was very exhilarating and an activity that I thoroughly enjoyed. My dad told me of my uncle’s skill in the art of tickling trout. He was truly a genius for sure, he would wade along the banks of deep water holes that were very reedy on the outer edge, it would be up to 8 feet deep and due to the fact he was only a little over 5 feet tall the trout were often too low for his hands to reach. But this did not stop him, he simply held onto the reeds and used his feet to gently rub the underbelly of an unsuspecting trout slowly bringing it up to reachable distance and moving one hand under it followed by the other and then would flip the trout onto the bank. He most surely was a pro at trout tickling.

And the local policeman or wildlife officer of the day would have been the first to buy that fish off him and congratulate him on a job well done. Common sense will hopefully one day become more common.

My Uncle (it always seems to be an uncle!) taught me to catch fish this way. The method seemed to work best under rocks. For a trout to hide under a rock it would have at least two holes, one for the trout to go in, and one to come out. You locate the trout by trial and error, exploring each hole. When the trout was found you could use your other hand to find the other end of the trout. Catching the trout was then easy, so long as you didn’t mind getting wet.

To kill the fish he would put a thumb in its mouth and pull the head back, breaking its neck, all under water.

He would sometimes leave the fish there if he thought he might have been seen and come back later.

The problem with making this legal is that on a suitable river it is VERY easy to catch fish. I once caught 13 in about an hour, including an eel and one that was so deep (about 4 feet) that I was under the water holding my breath!.

You could catch them under banks as well, but there was a risk of finding a water rat that way and they bite.

Bailiffs would sometimes put barbed wire under the water covering the best trout hides and so you had to be very careful about this as well.

The best things in life seem to be the sort of thing mr plod frowns upon. Don’t you think?
There’s nought better than going home with a little something in ya pocket and, if that little something was swimming, running or growing moments earlier then you know it’ll taste all the better when you eat it in the next half hour or so. AND if that little something belongs to somebody else because the law says so then hey! what e don’t know won’t hurt e.
Used to tickle a few trout, it’s worth the first fifty trys to succeed believe me.some of you will, some of you won’t but if you stick with it you’ll see what i mean. Hoping to find a suitable stream soon as its been twenty years. Just got me a pair of lovely ferrets Orm and Sylke. Started hunting rabbits with the air rifle again. Enjoying the Autumn and all its fruits. Generally going back to my roots and my youth. Towns shit!! enjoy Owen.

Wow, I have never heard of trout tickling, seems like it would be hard to do ….

Somebody post a video and then maybe I’ll believe it.

“Somebody post a video and then maybe I’ll believe it.”

Have a look on youtube David.

Did it as a kid.