Trout in a box

Here’s to keep you busy at the office! A film worth the 4$ you’re going to spend to watch it! A Trout in a box, what a heck is that trout doing there for so long?  Ok, don’t let anyone catch you while you’re watching it at the office. A film slightly different than the fish porn we usualy share with you on Le Mouching! Voilà !

In the early 70s my father gave me a stuffed trout in a glass case for my birthday. Then I was a mad keen bait angler, and trout weren’t my quarry yet. But the gift proved prophetic, and I took up fly fishing in 1979.
Now in California, the trout regards me from the bookshelf. He, or she, asks “why am I in this box?” It’s a good question. The case is lovely, bow-fronted with an elegant curve to the glass and neat gold border, the background is realistic and well-preserved rush and sedge. The inscription says; ‘TROUT – Gwendreath Fach Wht. 1lb 9ozs.’ It is a very fine fish, the fins full and youthful, the flank gold with black and red spots, the back blue and olive. Sixteen inches long, it is a very good trout, but hardly exceptional. But the angler thought he was, because he so loved his little river in Wales, that he memorialized what he believed was the best he could do there.
Our trout was caught on May 3rd 1914, so May of last year was the centenary. I travelled to Wales at the end of April, met with local anglers in their pub, to try and track the trout’s captor. I fished the little river a hundred years to the day, to see if I could duplicate the feat. So we have a film about how obsession with trout doesn’t have to involve the biggest fish, the spirit of place can mean just as much, or more.