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Trout tickling
- lordnacho 11y agoNot a fisherman here, so maybe someone can explain this to me: - If you can get your hands on the fish's belly for a whole minute, why not just grab it then and there? - How did evolution let something like this happen? What happens if the fish swims near the bottom of the stream for a bit and happens to touch it's belly?
- jgershen 11y agoIt looks like it's less about "putting the fish to sleep" and more about simulating weeds with your fingers to avoid alarming the fish as you start to grab it. http://drowningworms.com/tickle-trout/ http://drowningworms.com/tickle-trout/
- JoshMnem 11y agoYes, you just need to work your hands into position and then grab it. I don't think that it's a good idea to do it if you aren't going to eat the fish, because I remember having to grab it very forcefully in the gills to be sure that it wouldn't slip away.
- perbu 11y agoI once tried to grab a trout that was sort of stuck in a tight passage. The moment I grabbed it it immediately panicked and managed to break free from my grasp. I got wet. If I read this correctly it would not have reacted as violently to me grabbing it if I had tickled it beforehand and I might have had an amazing trout dinner with an epic fishing tale to go with it.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoFish are covered in jackets of slime. They have, for obvious evolutionary reasons, relatively few grab-points. In the belly they are convex on all sides so any squirm makes them narrower than your grasp, and they get free. The gills are a concavity that can be grasped.
- JoshMnem 11y agoI've done this during survival training. I think that it's illegal in some places, because it works so well. I got the impression that the fish thinks that your fingers are vegetation. When you're in the right position, you can grab the gills and tail at the same time and throw it onto the shore where a helper can dispatch it.
- xivzgrev 11y agoSeems less like tickling and more like gentle massaging. And if you're lucky, you may end up with a happy ending.
- bshimmin 11y agoFor anyone worried this isn't suitable for work: it's not a euphemism.
- andrewmcwatters 11y agoSomewhere, in some office, it is now.
- blowski 11y agoFor those too lazy to search on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VegSmoDWqdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VegSmoDWqdY
- campers 11y agoIts a form of Tonic Immobility, or animal hypnosis https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_immobility https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_immobility There's even an entry on Trout tickling on the page. What quite impressive is putting bigger sharks into the tonic state. Here's a pretty crazy clip from the Sharkman doco where he puts a feeding Tiger shark into tonic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0HnUvXMH7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0HnUvXMH7w
- Serow225 11y agoChickens are easily hypnotized :)
- pandatigox 11y agoI first heard of trout trickling when reading Roald Dahl's Danny the Champion of the World. I'm surprised to know it's actually a thing - I thought the author made it up. Of course, as others mentioned, highly illegal and discouraged in modern times
- acjohnson55 11y agoI think I accidentally downvoted you, sorry.
- miguelrochefort 11y agoThe Unreasonable Effectiveness of Trout Tickling