clinging to life

Elvis · Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:34 am Post subject: clinging to life

first off...no I havent been smoking electric puha....
good wife n I went fishing this evening....first time this season as been crazy busy at work..
2hrs on water and we boated 9 trout...released 5 and kept 4,between 2-4lbs
into boat IKI spiked through brain and left in bottom of boat against cool alloy.
finished fishing at 19;00 came home had cuppa tea and went out to scale and gut fish...... Shocked

one of them moved..... wtf

then did it again....
went and got wife to confirm I hadnt lost my marbles.... Very Happy

yip she could see movement too....soon as water hit it from hose,its gil plates opened....hosed in brain hole/cavity...then gutted it quickly...ahhh that will stop it for sure....finished cleaning all four fish and picked them up...fingers through gills AND IT WAS STILL MOVING Shocked

this is two and half hours since it came out of water....brown trout arent supposed to do this...eels yes...but not trout...
put them in bucket in fridge to fillet tomorrow
pleased my good wife was here to see it as well or would be looking over shoulder for men in white coats coming to put me in padded room...

pete4d · Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 6:08 am Post subject: Re: clinging to life

Zombies , Who would've thought they were down-under too,,,, Cheers

DallanC · Site Admin Joined: Jan 18, 2005 Posts: 3572 Location: Utah

Brown Trout are among the most resilient trout on the planet. I've seen big browns in tiny holes along creeks that have mostly dried out. Who knows how they can live in such low oxygen environments... but they do.

Kindof strange to still have some reflex however, some time after having been gutted.

-DallanC

Elvis · Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 5:24 pm Post subject: Re: clinging to life

I kind of hope it had passed on its strong will to live genes last spawning season....this lake/dam is pretty much mud bottomed,the browns took off in first few seasons,the released salmon did ok but never got much above 1lb...when we released the rainbow trout they did very well...now it seems the browns are dominant again....looks like thier hardiness gives them advantage over the rainbows.in years where water level stays constant (duck shooting is easy and awesome) the weed beds grow well and trout do too...unfortunately fluctuating watter levels mean the weed dies off as it gets dried out and takes time to grow back again.maybe some strategic salting of oxygen weed up small side creek might be worth looking at.....

English Mike · Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 3:34 pm Post subject: Re: clinging to life

Late one afternoon a few years back, I caught a plaice around 1½lb in weight with my last cast, gutted it & took it home to have for dinner.
Washed it, covered in foil with a knob of butter & some herbs & put it in the oven.
A minute later there's this loud banging sound coming from the kitchen & when I went through, it was coming from the oven.
Opened it & here's the plaice, busted out of the foil & flapping up & down like a mad thing.
Clearly a nerve thing, as it had no heart to pump blood & had been out of water more than an hour.
Kinda weird all the same.
Tasted just fine, though the thought of it maybe leaping around was a little...

PaulS · Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 6:29 pm Post subject: Re: clinging to life

If you remove the head, do they still do that? I always gut the fish by running the blade from throat to end and then cut across the neck and pull everything out still connected to the head. Never had a headless fish seem alive after that.

Elvis · Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 10:54 pm Post subject: Re: clinging to life

I used to cut throat and snap neck backwards...by not doing so they are easier to fillet....but may just go back to doing so again...