Primal drama in old starlight

Midnight in June and the river is swelling with rain from the day. The conditions are nearly perfect for a chance of a mighty sea trout in the pools below my house. Perhaps I’m over-egging the word ‘mighty’, particularly since the rod catch on the local river is far down on former years.

Sea trout have become a rarity and the few persistent survivors tend to weigh in at roughly a pound. These silvery finnock cut a small dash beside plaster casts of massive fish that hang above the optics in the local pub, but since sea trout have all but vanished from many of their former strongholds, we are simply glad to have them at all. Flushed and bulky with sea-going goodness,