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Tickling trout but seriously

By A.A.Richards

Tickling trout is illegal as far as i know in the UK. When i was a young boy i had heard that trout could be tickled into a trance like state by rubbing their underbellies gently with your fingers. I soon was practicing this on a local stream near Nelson in South Wales. I found that it was easier to wade in to where the water naturally pours over the rocks and place you hand into one of the holes or rock crevices, than to gently lift up a stone that might be concealing a trout under it. This stream teemed with wild trout and placing my arm into the hole sometimes up to the shoulder i would gently touch the tail end of the fish (always working upstream the way the trout face so as to approach them from behind).Then i would very slowly and gently work my fingers under the trouts underbelly tickling it gently until i was able to raise it up gently enough in the water to get a firm grip on the fish and then with one quick movement throw it out of the water onto the grass bank. Most of the fish in this stream were too small to be taken but after a typical days trout tickling i would have three or four average or  one or two good sized brown trout. Later i  used to tickle trout on larger rivers with much bigger fish and was very successful at this but i only went  tickling trout when i did not have any money for fishing tackle or a permit. Trout tickling now is largely a forgotten art ,but although i enjoyed this as a child running wild in a safer society, i do not believe there is any need for trout anglers to take this up now that we are living in more prosperous times. It could however perhaps be taught to soldiers who may come to rely on it as part of their survival training. Trout tickling is linked with poaching but it is often forgotten that during the 1930’s many good soldiers who had been lucky enough to survive the Great War only to face years of unemployment along with the mass of the general public of the UK and the United States during the great depression would have had little choice but to supplement their poor diet other than  by such methods snaring rabbits and tickling trout. I also remember  trout tickling being quite popular in Wales during the miners strike of 1984, when Mrs. Thatcher,  devastated the national coal mining industry  and the colliers where on strike for a whole year without  any financial support from the State.

Trout tickling is mentioned by Shakespeare in Twelfth knight, “for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling”. With the abundance of streams, lakes and rivers in Wales and England it is very likely indeed that the ancient Celts would have tickled trout.Trout tickling has nothing to do with the art of noodling which involves the funny act of using ones arm as a kind of bait. Tickling trout is a bit hit and miss, more miss than hit really but it is great fun and some people can get quite good at it .If you can catch wild brown trout by tickling them you will enjoy the look on peoples faces when they see you do so(not the bailiff’s face though). However has mentioned at the start of this article as far as i am aware it is illegal to tickle trout in England and Wales. That reminds me of another literary line by Dickens something about the law being an Ass. Today if the fish are returned unharmed and are not disturbed at the time of their spawning then is there a problem?. In fairness i should contrast this with an article about a poacher taking two sea trout during their spawning which i most strongly disagree with.....  Poacher is fined for trout tickling . I remember trout tickling with my schoolboy friend Patrick when he put his hand under a rock to tickle a trout he let out a huge scream it was not a trout under the rock but a  similarly surprised water rat both went in opposite directions with great haste, how i laughed.

In the fourteenth century somebody caught poaching trout through sheer need (and rarely greed)could expect to be imprisoned or fined. This was not seen has so much a law against property has no property was broken into and the aristocrats themselves often poached against each other. However, by the 1750’s continued rural poverty was rampant and poaching was for many a matter of survival. Evil mantraps where set for these impoverished risk takers which would either kill them or brake their legs as a deterrent. Poachers were sentenced to longer prison sentences and more were hanged particularly for carrying firearms or assaulting game keepers. Nearly all these poachers had been driven off their land by the Enclosures Act and where laborers on very low wages trying to feed themselves and their families although a few traded on the black-market for profit. From 1830 the less fortunate could be exported to the colony’s for up to fourteen years. This was to protect the aristocrats who preferred to remain blind to the link between the mass poverty and poaching so that their game was protected for their private fishing parties and shoots. Taking all this into account is it any wonder that the poacher was  seen by many as a kind of working class hero pitting his wits, and often his life, against  tyrannical landlords and estate owners.

I would like to expand on this subject if you can help please E-mail me .