Thread: Tickling Trout

Brings back memories. When I was about 8 years old around 1954 I used to camp on the Waitahanui for weekends trout fishing with my Dad. I had a very small home made bamboo rod and tiny bakelite reel with linen thread for a line. My fly was a tattered old hawk n red. I was having a great time catching and releasing small fingerling trout from the banks of Delatours pool just outside our tent. Along came a few of the "local" teenage lads. They lay down on either side of me on the low grassy bank with an arm each dangling in the stream, feeling around in the undercut. It wasn't long before a couple of 6 pound trout lay kicking on the bank beside me. I was gobsmacked and later asked my Dad why we weren't fishing that way! He explained the situation satisfactorily so I just watched and learned from the locals but stayed with my rod and reel method.
Decades later, I was a guest, along with a few other Kiwi foresters, of the Canadian government. In the back woods of BC we came across some Indian lads fishing the upper reaches of a small river which was bank to bank with spawning Salmon. These lads were using sticks about 2" in diameter, wound with 20 ft of nylon and a big chrome kahawai spinner on the end. When dlicked, the line peeled off like from an open faced Alvey surf reel.They would cast the lure across the river, let it sink and then handline it back in a series of jagging movements, trying to foulhook the fish. This method was moderately successful. We noticed a large rock overhanging part of the river and so one of our party asked the Indian boys if they knew how to tickle fish. The answer was blank looks. We signaled them to watch and before long we tickled a good sized red backed salmon, then another, and gave them the fish. They had never heard of the method. We were surprised. I sometimes wonder if that tickle trick has now spread through the back country reservations of Canada! A little while later that afternoon we realized there was an elderly squaw on the opposite side of the river. We hadn't noticed her until she began shrieking at one of the boys because he had waded out into the river , onto the spawning redds to try to cast his spinner further across. She told him in no uncertain terms to get out of there and not to disturb the riverbed.