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Does trout behave different on different places of earth?

In NZ you often find trout feeding in shallow waters, riffles etc. Back in Sweden most fishes are caught in deeper water and many fisherman seems to be thinking that the big fishes are always standing far from the banks or in deep water. I know that's wrong but is there a difference from how they behave in NZ. I know some small lakes back home that mainly hold trout over 2lbs, similar to the streams in NZ, where you sometimes see big trout in shallow waters (20cm) very close to the bank. This is making me very confused What are your experiences / theories?

Cheers Jonas

Hi Jonas,

This is a good question and it puzzled me until I fished the Kola for trout. There the fish are in exactly the same places as NZ backcountry waters - only you can't see them because their camouflage works. I've experienced the same thing with big fish in Canadian Tailwaters too. No doubt a long time in the future, trout in NZ will evolve to have a new camouflage.

For the most part I think a trout is a trout. However pressure makes them behave differently. They go from naive to spooky to "educated". That takes much less longer to happen!

My thoughts anyway.

Cheers, Paul

Doesn't it have something to do with predators?

NZ trout don't have to contend with (as far as I know) fish eating birds, for instance, or otters, or even seals.

I still spend time prospecting rivers here in Scotland, looking hopefully into backwaters and so on, but I very rarely see trout in the places I''d expect to find them in NZ. Almost never, in fact. On the other hand, it is well known that they will often come right into the shallows in lochs - because often that's where the food is.

Al.

They will be where they get the most food for the least effort. Trout here in the southern English chalk rivers move into the shallows when there is a big hatch. They probably move into deeper water at home when there is no food because of predators as a previous post suggested. The NZ shallow water trout always seem to be in pockets where they are not battling the flow when food is scarce almost on the bank sometimes .
TK

It’s not unusual to be picking up rising fish in my local (UK) freestone stream in under 18 inches of water, come the summer.

Regards

Vince

Apart from UK reservoirs, I've never seen packs of rainbows "herding" coarse fish fry and then smash into them to stun them to the surface, to return and sip them down.

I couldn't fall asleep last night and i came to think a lot about this... Maybe the reason while people don't catch much fish near the banks back home is because most people just wade straight into the rivers to be able to reach "as far out as possible". And even if they stay on the banks a "stealth approach" isn't used. That combined with most people fishing their flies downstream (wet- and dryflies) here would spook any trout before any cast was made.

Couldn't agree more Jonas, I find a fish then get into the water if necessary. There are some over grown streams that you must wade but the mantra is "move little, look much" (some Hollywood native American). If people follow Paul's casting vids we ill hopefully see more dry waders.
TK