Should I Stay?
A Trout's Dilemma
Should
I stay or should I go? A serious question indeed! So much so
that an adolescent trout may, on some rivers, go through a
bit of an identity crisis. "Am I a brown trout or a sea
trout?", she will ask. "Will I emigrate or stay at home?" The answer will generally depend, as it so often does, on
the home environment and parental expectation.
On the short, rocky, acidic streams of
the west coast, there will be little to keep the ambitious
young female at home and the general expectation will be
that she will go to sea as soon as she is old enough, there
to make something of herself, to mature into a beautiful sea
trout, who will have many suitors when she returns for her
annual summer holiday. Indeed, she will, in all probability,
have to fight them off. She can't really be bothered with
all this sex business, though ... she thinks it's all very
over-rated ... and it's always over so quickly! Still, she
likes the attention and that seems to make all the travel worthwhile
... and it's always very satisfying to see the
young fry when she comes home. There will always be some,
however, who are just not cut out for adventure, or who are
perhaps expected to follow the perfectly respectable, if
slightly boring, family tradition of keeping the home fires
burning, but the majority of the young females will elect to
get out as soon as they can.
Most of the males, on the other hand, are pretty lazy and
can't be bothered with all the hassle of moving away. They
are sexually precocious and generally have there minds on
only one thing. They can only get that at home, so they may
as well hang around until the chance comes. It may be only
once a year but, boy, is the Great October Orgy worth
waiting for! It's not much fun for the rest of the year,
though. Things are hard at home and all their energy is
needed to keep body and soul together. Some young males will
follow the young females to sea, thinking they might be
missing out on something. They will eventually return, with
the females, as impressive specimens, to while away their
time over the long summer holiday, relaxing in the deep
shady pools with the beautiful mature females. When the time
comes, they will have no trouble seeing off the small
brownies and will have their pick of the crop of female sea trout
... but they will often wonder if the long courtship
and all that sea travel was really worthwhile. Size isn't
everything, after all.
On the richer rivers of the south and east, the expectations
are entirely different. Here, the brown trout are the
aristocrats, the establishment. Life here is very civilised.
There is plenty of everything to go round and order is
maintained by a strict hierarchy based on seniority. The
younger trout are very respectful and almost always give way
to their elders. The young males, however, like young males
everywhere, generally think of only one thing - well, two
things, really ... food and sex - and can be a bit of a
handful at times, especially at the back end of the year.
The females are brought up to stay at home. Broadening of
the horizons through travel is discouraged, although there
will always be a few rebellious youngsters, usually female,
often with unconventional family backgrounds, who leave home
to go to sea - a case of "like mother, like daughter". They
will return for the summer holidays and the Great October
Orgy but will generally be shunned by the brown trout
community, especially the local females who resent all the
attention they get from the young males.
The wise old trout, though, are happy to
see the comings and goings of these "silver tourists", as
they are known locally. They remember the time of the Great
Pollution when the whole river trout population was almost
wiped out and only recovered through the valiant spawning
effort of a few returning sea trout. They now see the
emigration of the few young rebels as an insurance against
any possible future domestic catastrophe.
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