But she has a great personality...

We have all heard tales and legends of particularly elusive lunkers that seem to be smarter than the average angler. Now scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden believe that Brown Trout may posess individual personalities.

"My results show that it are not just humans and other mammals that exhibit personality. Also brown trout differ among each other in their level of aggression and react differently to changes in their surroundings", says Bart Adriaenssens. "The release of a novel object in the aquarium causes very different reactions. Some individuals will immediately explore this object, whereas others will rather hide in a corner and try to avoid every contact."

Although it might just be the meek that inherit the creek bed...

"But it are not always the bold and aggressive fish who are most successful. When we marked trout individually and released them back in the wild, it were shy trout who grew most rapidly."

Qu’est-ce qui ce passe?

FlyFishMagazine's European operatives might have stumbled upon some key intelligence in the world of international fly fishing competition. Does anyone have any idea why the French are experimenting with "gypsy moth and spruce budworm nuclear polyhedrosis viruses ingested by rainbow trout?"

Rainbow trout fingerlings were fed dried krill injected with gypsy moth or spruce budworm nuclear polyhedrosis virus (LdNPV and CfNPV, respectively) at a total dose of 1.4 x 107 occlusion bodies (OBs) per fish.

The good news is that the trout did fine...

By the end of the 21-day experimental period there were no adverse effects on fish survival or behavior and no significant differences in feeding rates or growth between treated and control fish. The internal organs of all fish were examined at the end of the experiment and there were no signs of lesions, discoloration, swelling, hemorrhaging, or other aberrations.

Apparently it all has something to do with prime rib...

Visceral tissues were analyzed with a horseradish peroxidase-labeled whole genomic DNA probe (enhanced chemiluminescence procedure) to detect infection by the NPVs. There were no indications of NPV infection (no positive signals) in stomach and intestinal tract tissues of treated fish. High background signals were obtained from liver samples, but further analyses indicated that these were not due to the presence of LdNPV or CfNPV.

Perhaps the French are breeding some sort of Mayfly super race?

The protocols outlined here should be applicable to determining infectivity and effects of genetically modified insect viruses on fish.