The journalist Andrew Brown, in a newspaper article, has summed up the attraction of fishing
on Dartmoor. He wrote,
To gain a sense of a remoteness from the quotidian world, and closeness to primal monsters,
is one of the main reasons for fishing.
Are you sure it's a camera?
It is quite unrelated to the size of the quarry.
Lovely.
It's a function of their wildness.
Wild brown trout are now almost impossible to find in the southeast of England,
and little valued where they are found, compared to fat stocked fish.
Dartmoor offers the last remaining accessible and affordable fishing for them in southern England.
The majority of wild brown trout caught on Dartmoor and in south seven are less than eight inches long.
But each season anglers catch larger, twelve or thirteen inch fish.
As guides and instructors we are often asked, are big fish more difficult to catch than smaller fish,
and are big fish smarter than smaller fish?
As guides and instructors we often ask ourselves,
do skilled anglers catch more fish, and do skilled anglers catch bigger fish?
This short video discusses the size of trout in the rivers we fish on Dartmoor and in south seven.
I hope it will help you appreciate our fish of whatever size.
It's our job to show you the necessary skills to catch them,
and to explain why we treat them all with great care.
The graph shows the number of trout of various sizes caught by anglers on a west country river.
Most of the trout were less than eight inches long.
Relatively few trout of ten inches or longer were caught, and hardly any fish of thirteen inches or longer were taken.
Two questions spring to mind.
Why were so few big fish caught?
And are bigger fish older and wiser, and therefore less likely to be caught by anglers?
The larger fish are certainly older.
This graph shows the growth rate of wild brown trout in our area.
Fish of twelve to fourteen inches take six years to reach that length,
and our trout are about three years old before they spawn for the first time.
Consequently, small fish should be carefully returned to the water so that they have an opportunity to reproduce,
and it also helps to use barbless hooks.
Well done.
But our larger surviving fish, necessarily smarter, are more difficult to catch than smaller, younger fish.
They're certainly better at avoiding predators.
They may be more easily scared by unfamiliar shadows, sites and vibrations than non-survivors.
But we need to remember that fish have evolved to deal with their natural enemies, not necessarily anglers' flies.
Provided you can present an appropriate fly at an appropriate time and place,
and most importantly, do it in such a way that you do not scare the fish,
there is no reason why you should not be successful.
But how do you catch the bigger fish?
There's a well-known saying that ten percent of the anglers catch ninety percent of the fish.
The graphs suggest that there are simply fewer bigger fish,
and therefore the more fish you can actually catch, then the greater the chance that one of them will be big.
If you do catch a big one, treat it with the respect it deserves.
After all, it's one of nature's great survivors.
But don't worry if you don't catch a big fish.
It really is just a matter of proportions.
John Gerak's book, Fly Fishing Small Streams, is a beautifully constructed mixture of how-to information and mental approach to small-stream fishing.
Gerak has a refreshing approach to the increasing tendency to equate fishing quality to the size of the fish caught.
For example, he writes, let me introduce an idea, just something to kick around.
Maybe your stature as a fly fisherman isn't determined by how big a trout you can catch,
but by how small a trout you can catch without being disappointed,
and of course, without losing the faith that there's a bigger trout in there.
Thank you.
