1.  Genetically different trout are capable of spawning together and producing viable offspring but many have remained distinct for thousands of years. This happens because they have different life strategies e.g. their choice of spawning locations and timing or adaptations to exploit different niches within the food chain.

2.  Brown trout have between 38 and 42 pairs of chromosomes. Humans have only 23 pairs.

3. Large trout can eat large prey. For example, it is thought that large New Zealand trout feed on the periodic plagues of mice. Large brown trout will feed on small terrestrial animals that fall into the water, such as baby birds falling from overhanging nests, or even swimming mice or voles.

4. Trout have teeth on the roof of the mouth, called vomerine teeth, and this helps to distinguish trout from salmon.

5. Trout scales have growth rings, as new hard tissue is added around the edges as they grow. They can be read just like growth rings in a tree.

6.  Trout have body language. When competing for a ‘lie’ they will posture and ‘gape’ by opening their mouths wide and flaring the gills whilst advancing on their opponent. Fighting is kept to a minimum. Submissive fish close their mouth, contract their fins, go pallid and drop towards the stream bed.

7.  Trout don’t have scales for the first month of their life.

8. The majority of trout die before their first birthday. Mortality rates in their first year of life are typically 95% or greater, falling to around 40 - 60% in subsequent years. Brown trout can reach the ripe of age of 20 years.

10. Trout can rapidly change colour, getting darker when being aggressive, lighter
when being submissive or in response to changing background colour.

 11.  Salmon and trout can interbreed and do produce hybrids.

12.   A typical female brown trout produces about 2,000 eggs per kilogram (900 eggs per pound) of body weight at spawning.

13.   Trout, like most other fish, cannot regulate their body temperature – they tick over at the same temperature as the water in which they swim.

14.   A Trout can look and focus out of both corners of each eye simultaneously meaning that it can see in almost every direction at once.

15.  The earliest account of flyfishing (AD 200) is by the Roman scholar Aelian who recorded Macedonians ‘cast with rods to speckled fish’.

Trout • 8" x 8" watercolor framed to 12" x 12" • $200