4th Saturday...

[flyfishin22]

Yeah? Ok. Well what part of a steelheads instinct played part when i caught a credit river tagged fish at rouge river this past fall? The fish was tagged at erindale park by one of my personal friends Mark Polanski(I hope he doesnt mind me using his name in this) as he works for the craa, two weeks later I caught the same fish with the tag across the city up the rouge river at highway 2. Now i dont care what scientifc support you have but i know for a fact that, that fish knew it wasnt in its home river and it must have taken a decent amount of thinking to figure out where rouge was from credit which is quite a ways. But hey what do i know? After all I never pay attention to baro pressures and all that jazz when i fish, like most have said I fish when I have the time and for this season am lucky that ive been able to head out almost 4 days a week and you know what I catch fish everytime im out because I walk alot of river not because I go along a "guideline" Not saying none of those factors matter cause like I already said im sure it does to a certain extent, but hey maybe im just really lucky all the time

I agree, i mean, i fish a lot of small creeks and the main thing is if you dont spook the fish and you put your fly in the right place, 9 times out of 10 that fish is going to bite regardless of the weather. Now maybe it might not bite as aggresively or it bites after a few drifts, it will still bite. Anyways, this is all based on my experience. I have heard of an older guy who fishes for stocked pond trout and goes by the moon phases, but that's completely different fishing.

 

[NADO]

LOL come on!!!! Someone needs to chime in here...Steelhead know their home river through INSTINCT, not through conscious thought...I thought that was common knowledge for all steelhead fishermen

 

[LICENSETOPIN]

Yeah so why was it 3km up river in the credit to begin with when it could have gone to rouge right away? How about all the american stocked fish we catch in our rivers up here? Not all answers can be found online buddy go do some research out on the water.

 

[NADO]

Yeah so why was it 3km up river in the credit to begin with when it could have gone to rouge right away? How about all the american stocked fish we catch in our rivers up here? Not all answers can be found online buddy go do some research out on the water.

Well now stocked fish wouldnt have the instinct of knowing what river they were born in now would they....No research is needed fish do not process complex thought and mammals do....that would be the difference between a Dolphin and a Trout...

 

[LICENSETOPIN]

LOL your ignorant to the fact that life is never constant and always changing. I bet if someone took the time to train a trout to do back flips im sure it could. Actually i remember finding a video of wild steelhead getting hand fed, what part of thier instinct told them to eat off someones hand?

 

[dcamb]

LOL your ignorant to the fact that life is never constant and always changing. I bet if someone took the time to train a trout to do back flips im sure it could. Actually i remember finding a video of wild steelhead getting hand fed, what part of thier instinct told them to eat off someones hand?

Repetitive introduction of food by hand would have triggered the trouts instinctual drive to find accessible and plentiful sources of nourishment, same with carp: they instinctually return to spots that have been chummed with corn. There's also the possibility that the wild trout lacked an instinctual recognition of humans as a threat. That sort of behaviour and lack of evolutionary instinct has been demonstrated by various species that have subsequently gone extinct at the hand of humans.

On one hand NADO is definitely right and the scientific community would back him up, on the other LICENSETOPIN has a point, there's a lot we don't know about animal activity. There are always intangibles in any equation.

 

[NADO]

Thank you...finally a voice of reason. I agree there are new variables that effect the behavior of trout and other fish, these variables alter their instincts over generations with the help of natural selection.

What about the mysterious fish who consciously went back to the river it was born in? LOL

 

[troutsandy]

Just thought I would chime in on this subject, I find it quite interesting because we catch the odd (and I mean seriously rare) stocked trout from Minnesota in Thunder Bay. There has been a longitudinal study taking place for a number of years up here on a creek that is no longer open to fishing. The results have expressed about a 2% stray rate among wild fish. As far as stocked fish are concerned it is my understanding that the results are slightly higher but again it depends on the species and strain of fish.

 

[LICENSETOPIN]

"What about the mysterious fish who consciously went back to the river it was born in? LOL" - obviously she knew she wasnt in the right river im sure that required some thinking. All I know is if trout were any "dumber" there would be alot less of them in the rivers.

 

[Mykester]

I think it's physically impossible for trout to develop the ability to think consciously. Look at this diagram comparing the brain of a human to the brain of a trout (C is the size comparison):

The light gray part is the brain stem, which is involved in primitive automatic functions like respiration. The white part on the left is the olfactory system, which is involved in processing smell. That leaves a tiny portion of the brain, whose resources are left to deal with other functions such as vision and nociception. L2P is confusing operant conditioning with conscious thought.

 

[Mykester]

I also have a problem with the story about the fish who returned consciously to another river. One question, why? Why would a fish waste resources going to another river when it already made it to one? What difference does it make? It seem it's more likely to be killed by predators going out and traveling a while to another one. It seems that consciousness would be selected against through natural selection if it caused fished to make irrational decisions.

 

[dcamb]

I also have a problem with the story about the fish who returned consciously to another river. One question, why? Why would a fish waste resources going to another river when it already made it to one? What difference does it make? It seem it's more likely to be killed by predators going out and traveling a while to another one. It seems that consciousness would be selected against through natural selection if it caused fished to make irrational decisions.

I'm sure you've all witnessed trout schooling together as they progress up rivers. They also school in the main lake or Ocean, a primitive survival mechanism. One explanation for errant trout migration, particularly among stocked trout, is basically the 'confused' trout literally getting mixed up in the wrong crowd. A Credit steelhead ends up in a school of Rouge steelhead out in Lake Ontario while chomping on some alewifes; the credit fish has an evolutionarily developed instinct for self preservation linked to 'safety in numbers' so it ends up running the rouge with the school it happened to latch onto out in the lake.

 

[420Fisher]

i once was told or thought that fish use magnetic fields to determine where they are, and are going.
it kinda makes cents to me. i think they can senece the difference between water/gravel from the credit and that from another like bronte.
and with erosion the "feilds" move down stream, untill the realize that the river has washed out there spawning spot. thats when they will start to gather and find new locations.

they credit is VERY lond with so many tribs. fish born there will always know "the feeling" of that river.

but thats just what i think. doesnt have to be correct to make cents to me..

 

[TorontoMikey86]

"What about the mysterious fish who consciously went back to the river it was born in? LOL" - obviously she knew she wasnt in the right river im sure that required some thinking. All I know is if trout were any "dumber" there would be alot less of them in the rivers.

hahaha :lol: amen..