Trout

Overview

Trout live in the side channels of the braided river at the Greyford Reach, where the Headwater water runs cold and clear over gravel. They are the fish of the Highbank inns: in the common rooms of the carters' inns along the road, people waiting their turn at the toll gate eat barley bread, mutton broth, and trout from the side channels. A boy going down the night queue with trout in a wet basket is part of a market day at Greyford.

Appearance

A trout taken for the inn table is about the length of a hand and forearm, a firm, thick-backed fish with a square tail and a small, hard mouth. Its back is olive brown, its sides silver-gold, and it is speckled all over with black, with a scatter of red spots ringed in pale along the flank. Fresh from the water it shines; within an hour it dulls. It smells clean, of cold water and wet stone, and a fresh trout is judged by that smell.

Habitat and Range

Trout want moving, cold, well-aired water over clean gravel, and the Reach gives them that in its side channels and along the heads of its bars. They hold in the current behind stones and in the lee of the old causeway blocks, facing upstream. They grow scarce in the low months, when the side channels shrink and warm, and gather again in the deeper runs; in the spring floods, when the river runs high and brown with snowmelt, they are hard to take at all.

Behaviour and Temperament

A trout feeds on what the current brings it: insects falling onto the water, larvae from under the stones, small fish. It rises at dusk and at first light, when the surface rings with them. It is wary of shadow and footfall on the bank, and a careless step sends a whole run of them darting for cover.

Life Cycle

Trout spawn in autumn and early winter, cutting shallow beds in the gravel of the side channels, where the eggs lie through the cold months and hatch with the spring. A flood that shifts the bars can bury or scour away a whole year's beds, and the Reach has lean years for trout after a bad flood.

Uses and Dangers

Trout is the better fish of the crossing. Highbank households and inns buy it from the people who take it in the side channels, with lines, small nets, and traps, and the carters' inns sell it to drivers and walkers waiting for the gate. It must be eaten fresh or smoked the same day. Taking it is no more dangerous than any work in the Reach's water: a ford that was knee-deep last autumn can be a scour hole this year, and a summer storm upstream can raise the channel while a fisher stands in it.

Lore and Belief

Carters say that a trout supper at Greyford is the last good meal before the Marches, or the first good meal after them, depending on which way a driver is going. Fishers take the first trout of the spring back to the water at some crossings of the Headwater country, so that the river remembers who fed it.

Bounty-takers waiting at the Highbank inns for an outlaw to come back over the river eat a great deal of trout, and the inn-wives say they can tell how long a hunter has waited by how sick he is of it.

Where It Appears

• The Greyford Reach: Ordinary Life