Freshwater Fish

I have never been a keen fisherman, and I have always pondered the sanity of those who sit in the cold and wet, stalking a prey of trout or bream. I’m delighted when they trap a good carp or trout, but have never been enormously taken by some of the bony creatures that people will sit up all night to catch.

The two kings of freshwater fish are salmon and sea trout. They are both really sea fish and better caught at the estuary than further upstream. Sea trout is probably my favourite fish, with a flavour that manages to be delicate without being insipid. I suppose I should mention farmed salmon and trout. Farmed salmon are quite adequate, but can never achieve the peaks of flavour of a wild fish. Farmed trout on the other hand are universally mediocre and the farmed versions of sea trout, carefully called salmon trout, are only large rainbows fed with some strange substance to colour the flesh pink. With salmon trout, as with all the other pleasures of life, you can’t beat the real thing.