Trout tickling
There can be much free food to be found in your woodlands, and the menu could be augmented with fresh fish, if you can master the art of trout tickling!
When you are walking along the banks of a stream or small river you will often startle a trout and it is likely to swim underneath the bank. If you lie, face down, on the bank at the point where the fish was last seen, you can then, very gently, slide both hands (two or three feet apart) beneath the bank and move inwards in a pincer movement. You will need a very gentle and delicate touch, much as though you are caressing your lover!
Keep your hands as low as you can as you try to stroke the underbelly of the unsuspecting fish. Remember that you will not be able to see what is going on under the bank, so you will have to identify by touch. Is it a stone, a tree root, a trout or even something horrid? If it is a fish then you will need to gently rub its underbelly whilst deciding which way around it is, then move your hands towards the head of the trout and smoothly, but firmly, tighten your grip around the gill/fin area behind the head.
You have now “tickled a trout” - but that’s not the end of the story! You will now need to try to stand up, whilst maintaining your grip on the fish with both hands and get well away from the stream. If you try to throw your trout back onto land, whilst still in the prone position, apart from unnecessarily damaging your fish, it will go ballistic and there is a fair chance that the next thing you hear will be a plop, as it regains its freedom!
It may seem difficult at first, but with practice it is possible to become quite proficient. A good way to hone your skills is by trying to locate and ‘catch’ the soap in your bath, without looking! If you are in the happy position of owning your own woodland what could be nicer than smoking your own trout with your own wood providing the smoke?
Trout tickling has been with us for a very long time and is mentioned in Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ when the lady-in-waiting Maria greets the arrival of her supervisor and head of Olivia’s household, the foolish Malvolio, with the words “for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling” (Act 2, Scene 5).
Leave a comment
Badgers, Beeches and Blisters
A book about the practicalities of managing your own woodland. Available free here.
7 comments so far
Melanie Barnes
2 September, 2007
Please investigate the claim that women and their pheromones make them more effective in the art of trout tickling.
catherine
20 September, 2007
Yes, I’ve heard that women make better anglers for that reason.
Bubba
18 October, 2007
@ 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.
Natalie
4 November, 2007
Bubba:
How exactly were the two first posts being sexist? I believe it was you that began the “gender stuggle” with your reply.
Duncan R. Bell
6 November, 2007
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!”).
Mel
20 April, 2008
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.
Del
16 June, 2008
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.