First Cast ... Now that Santa has sleighed away for another year, we wish A Happy New Year to all of our members and welcome to the first 2016 edion of your ‘The Big Puddle’. Looking back over the 2015 season, it’s been a mixed year dominated by difficult weather condions, mainly strong changeable winds. It has been an oen frustrang season with fewer fish in the net. However, Rutland gave us some of its finest dry fly and floang fry fishing during the season and even as I write some fine, fit trout are being caught on floang lines with dries, nymphs and fry paerns sll working in the depths of Winter. It’s not been a year for big numbers of large fish, although a good few have been caught, however, the fish are in great shape and feeding well in the unusually mild December condions. Let’s hope that with more than usual trout sll in the lake we can look forward to catching some heavy over-wintered fish of which Rutland water is famous, when the lake opens in Mid-March. It’s been a quiet couple of months from the boats, with bank fishing producing beer results. A smaering of predator anglers have been jigging the depths in search of Zander, resulng in fewer numbers but bigger average size this year. RWFF hope that you have enjoyed the Winter social evenings at the Cricket Club, we’ve had good aendances for these evenings and if you’ve missed them so far, please come along in January and enjoy some great real ale, smashing sandwiches, interesng talks and a bit of fun with like-minded fellow fly fishers. What’s not to like about that! See the reports of the evenings in this edion. Random Casts: Do Fish Feel Pain? The queson of whether fish feel pain while being caught by anglers, can oen sr up a heated debate, parcularly from non-anglers. We can all feel proud of the fact that due to the fact that as we love fishing, we will do all we can to protect the fish’s environment and support the diligent prosecuon of polluters, poachers and rule breakers. Thus protecng our favoured quarry. With- out anglers, many rivers and lakes would be forgoen, poisoned waste lands, devoid of wildlife and fish. Much as game shooters are responsible for well managed bird filled woods and moor- lands, we want our waters to be prisne, clean and full of life. However, the an’s may say that’s all very well, but then to hook them and inflect pain is not such a noble ambion. Let’s look at a snapshot of the latest studies and current opinions. Though bear in mind that knowledge of pain even in humans is not fully understood so any theories are not 100% conclu- 2 sive. The internaonal Associaon for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as “an unpleasant sen- sory and emoonal experience associated with actual or potenal ssue damage” . If we consider this regarding to a fish, are they capable of having an unpleasant sensory and emoonal experi- ence? I humans, if for example, you stand on a nail, the process begins with a nerve impulse starng at your foot and travelling to your brain. This message travels to the brain via ‘noceptors’. The relevant part of this is that there are 2 different types of noceptors- A-fibres and C-fibres. A-fibres travel very fast directly to the spinal cord and are responsible for the immediate reacon which tells us that we have stood on a nail and produces the (similar to a knee-jerk) reacon of taking our foot off the nail. C-fibres travel much slower to the base of the brain (known as the thal- amus) telling it that it’s going to hurt. These are responsible for the severe, throbbing, on-going actual painful experience, seconds aer the inial injury. I humans, a typical sensory nerve contains over 80% C-fibres, whereas fish have around 4-5% only and sharks and rays have no C-fibres at all. Human brains also have a complex ‘Limbic system’ responsible for memory, emoons and behaviour. Fish do not have this limbic system. So fish cer- tainly have a different sensory system to humans. They have A-fibres which produce the reflex acon to injury, but they lack of C-fibres which produce the emoon of pain. To put it simply they know that something is amiss but are unlikely to interpret this as a negave feeling. These are to a certain extent sll theories and current beliefs but it’s creates some interesng ideas on fish behaviour. Does a trout jump aer being hooked as a response to pain or a sensaon of a foreign object in the mouth or simply an insncve resistance against being pulled in an unde- sired direcon? Are the flamboyant reacons of this golden dorado (right) a re- sponse to pain or simply a in- sncve acon against being pulled in an undesired direcon? There is an excellent YouTube video of a pike hooked on dead- bait for minutes before the line snapped leaving the hook and bait sll in its mouth. The pike rests for a moment then proceeds to pick up a 2nd deadbait and is landed and returned seemingly unharmed and unstressed. See hps://youtu.be/wOpGA4m7sXk Experiences like these may lead us to believe that fish do not experience pain as we understand it. In fact it seems that a fish’s behaviour is mostly influenced by A-fibres and are therefore its acons are primarily reflex- ive, automac and insncve. Almost totally subliminal and involuntary. 3 We have all experi- enced badly injured fish suffering from horrendous slash wounds from cormo- rants as shown on the right or pike and are sll acvely feeding. If we accept this then we open up more the- ories of fish behaviour and why fish take our fly. Why do they feed at certain mes and not at others? How do salmon travel thousands of miles to their river of birth? It may be all to do with those A-fibres, the reflex/insnct nerves producing totally reflexive and subconscious behaviour. Meaning in feeding terms, that trout for example see something which looks like food and they’ll insncvely snap at it. Their lack of long term memory (limbic system) may mean that if they’ve been successfully eang green buzzers all day, they’ll insncvely keep eang green buzzers, forgeng that yesterday, black buzzers were their ‘dish of the day’. When an anglers comments… “….they want it on a Di3 sweep, with a slow figure of 8, something with a bit of orange in, and hang it before you recast” has the angler come up with the holy grail for successful fishing or has he just found a pod of trout at a certain depth and induced their reflex to take a fly. Who says this will work the next day. In short, we can believe that a trout’s behaviour is all about reflex and their emoon of pain or lack of it is perhaps not something which we can totally comprehend. A wild animal’s insncts are more advanced than ours but their emoonal translaon is virtually non-existent. BUT, and there’s always a BUT the fact that we don’t really know for sure makes it all the more interesng anyway! Acknowledgements to Bluewater boats and Sportsfishing Mag, Dr J.Ibrahim, Sneddon. What issues would you like to bring up? Send your leers to rutlandwaterflyfish- [email protected]. J Rob Waddington Editor. Rob is a well known Rutland guide and qualified trout and spey casng coach and Orvis endorsed guide. He has fly fished for 45 years for many different species around the UK and overseas. 4 The Lake Fishery and Bank Report from John Wadham. The lake level is at last rising aer what, for us at least, has been a relavely dry autumn: certainly, compared with the horrendous condions to be found in the North West of the country. Our commiseraons go out to all those to all those suffer- ing at this me. The lake water is very clear with some scaered weed beds. However, despite the paucity of weed cover and the clarity of the water, in many cases, fish can be found feeding very close to the bank: especially, early and late. The result of the abnormally very mild days and remarkably mild nights: when somemes the tem- perature has not fallen below 14°C has been that the marginal temperature has been at an all-me record high for the me of year at 10°C. This appears to have the effect of keeping the fish feeding very consistently. The most producve banks, without any doubt, have been from the Finches to Armley Wood and from East Creek, via Normanton Church to Fantasy Island. Hotspots here generally have been the harbour wall, just east of Normanton Church and from the blue pipes to the dam. When the wind has occasionally blown from the north, Yellowstone and Stockie Bay area have been producve. The best fish have been caught from the harbour itself and near Fantasy Island. The main diet here seems to have been corixa, shrimps and occasional fry. Grebes and Cormorants are feeding heavily on fry and are a sure indicator that trout will not be far away. So, consequently, GRHE, CDC, bits and floang fry have proved the most affecve tools for the job.