Trout Tickling - what the heck?!

Is this method of fishing for you? It's illegal so DON'T DO IT.

Here’s two stories by an anonymous someone from his high school years, some decades before. If you’re reading this and you’re the feds, these shenanigans are past the statute of limitations, so please move on.

Between Two Lakes

In high school I went to this camp and we would go to various places to either backpack or canoe. This year we went backpacking in the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness. I’d been on multiple trips before with the counselor and the other kids that went. We were reading things like Guns Germs and Steel. Very much trying to evoke the essence of primitive man. We had been trying to supplement all our food with wild edibles – American bistort, blueberries, others I can’t remember anymore.

We had a goal of eating at least one meal we had hunted and gathered entirely ourselves. This of course was hard, because we were on about six thousand calorie diets to keep up with our metabolism going 7-14 mile days with eighty-pound packs.

Our counselor was way into this - he brought guide books to help us find native food stuffs. We’d found an amazing spot for a layover - a river connecting two lakes. Since we had time at this spot, we went swimming and cliff jumping and noticed the lake was stocked with a ton of trout. We tried making rods from tree boughs. Someone had the foresight to bring line at least. We maybe tried to make our own hooks – I can’t quite remember. It was a failure. And we wanted results, so what we did was we hunted the trout in the river. Two people in the river wading with rocks, two others on either side, spotting. We would try to grab the trout, but more often stun them by chucking rocks at them. Then the waders would toss the fish to the spotters on the side of the river to dispatch them from their mortal coil. It started as a slow process – I wasn’t convinced it would work – but we got one then two then three then. . . It was addictive and we didn’t know when to stop because we didn’t bring bags to carry the catch in.

So, when we eventually stopped, the total catch was at least fourteen trout as long as our arms, from elbow to fingertip. There were six of us and we couldn’t finish eating all those fillets. We had some regrets.

Tickling

The year before we caught all those trout, we were on another trip in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. We had almost the same group, same counselor for sure. I don’t know where in the range we were, but we had found a beautiful meadow with a little brook gurgling through it. The creek had eroded in such a way that the turf had formed an overhang varying from 2-8 inches. We set up camp a ways away from the water. I think we had a layover there. In any case, I know we saw a mountain goat, because we peed for it, not actually topical to the story. Just wanted to acknowledge how wild it is to see a creature so excited to drink your pee - for its salt.

So, our counselor showed us this trick with trout. You kinda need the setup we had for it to work – an overhang of some sort. You need to move your body very slow for this process. You start by either lying prone or crouched down close to the edge. Then you move your arm, very slowly into the water on the outside of the overhang, then, very slowly, you cup your hand once it’s straightened out and bring it up very slowly. You’re feeling around for bellies – trout bellies.

Feeling around very slowly for a belly can take some time, but once you find it then the trickery starts. You begin to stroke the belly back and forth – mesmerizing it. What I was told was the trout thinks that it’s being mated with and gets docile. After stroking the belly for a bit, you move really fast and grab the trout by the belly: it’s slippery so it’s hard to get a good grip, you can try and shoot your other arm down to finagle it out of its home.

That sounded like it wouldn’t work, but we caught five in just that way.