890 
FOREST AND STREAM 
The Block and Tackle Support Was Only Eight Feet From the Floor, and for That Reason Mr. 
Shark Had a “Sitting” to the Photograhper. 
Why The Name “Educated” Trout? 
It Is Time That We Did Away With This Expression, and Bend Our 
Energies to Posting the Young and Enthusiastic Angler 
By Charles Zibeon Southard. 
E VERY now and then we hear and read a 
good deal about “educated” trout and it 
is usually from anglers who do most, if 
not all, of their fly-fishing on certain New York 
and Pennsylvania streams; and naturally enough 
the reader is led to believe that such wonderful 
trout are only to be found in these waters. One 
would suppose from what is said that these 
trout were a distinct species and consequently 
entirely different from all other trout found 
elsewhere. 
The anglers who talk and write about “edu¬ 
cated” trout also are quite prone to say that fly¬ 
fishing in Maine and Canadian waters is “wilder¬ 
ness” fishing and rather assume that all the skill 
and science of the sport belongs to the former 
fishermen and none of it to other anglers. 
I must confess that I have never seen a so- 
called “educated” trout in any water, yet I have 
had the good fortune to fish many waters quite 
a bit for many years. Therefore, I am unable 
to understand just why some trout should be 
so called or upon what method of reasoning or 
facts such a term could be properly applied to 
any trout, no matter where they were found. 
The conditions which govern the streams 
where “educated” and “wilderness” trout are 
caught are indeed often very different from each 
other, but the trout of one species (in this case 
the Salvelinus fontinalis), are always the same 
by nature in all the streams. 
It is quite true that trout environment differs 
in many respects in the more southerly waters 
from that found in the more northerly ones, yet 
the nature of the species remains unchanged 
wherever it is known. The “educated” and the 
“wilderness” or “uneducated” trout are one and 
the same kind of fish; and just because some 
trout are found in shallow, clear and placid 
streams, without foliage to amount to anything 
along their banks, and other trout inhabit more 
rugged, deeper and less clear streams, it will 
not do to say that one trout is a high school 
graduate and the other a primary school scholar. 
Again, simply because it is more difficult to 
catch trout on some waters than it is on others, 
does not warrant the giving to one lot of trout, 
on that account, credit for having a greater in¬ 
telligence. Plant the so-called “wilderness” trout 
in the streams or waters of civilization, such as 
are found in New York and Pennsylvania, and 
they immediately become in all respects like their 
brothers and sisters that are indigenous to these 
waters. Reverse the order and the results are 
precisely the same. If to-day a trout stream is 
changed in character from what it was thirty 
to forty years ago that is no valid reason for 
calling its present trout-inhabitants “educated.” 
After all is said, the so-called “educated” trout 
is only a different trout in name, not fact; it is 
found in streams that have been fished for years 
and which have changed in many respects as the 
years have rolled by, until at the present time 
they do not offer to the trout the protection 
which they did in former years. It is not the 
trout that are “educated” but rather the anglers, 
who have learned by experience how to fish the 
streams of civilization in contradistinction to the 
streams of the so-called “wilderness.” 
By nature each species of trout has its own 
peculiar characteristics, which in a large measure 
are fixed and can be changed but little; their 
habits, however, do change constantly with their 
environment; still it would hardly be correct, to 
my mind, to call one trout “educated” and an¬ 
other not, on that account. 
All trout ( Salvelinus fontinalis), and this 
means indigenous as well as planted fish, are 
easily frightened; in fact the emotion fear is 
the predominant emotion peculiar to trout; there¬ 
fore, the angler must consider well how not 
to frighten them before he casts a fly and this 
holds good on old as well as new waters if he 
would attain the greatest success and enjoyment 
while fishing. Trout experience the emotion fear 
in four forms which are timidity, alertness, wari¬ 
ness and mistrust; these forms in their turn pro¬ 
duce feelings of fearfulness, watchfulness, cau¬ 
tiousness and suspiciousness. All forms of fear 
in trout are most forcibly brought into action 
by shadows and moving objects above the sur¬ 
face of the water than in any other way. The 
reason for this is that they are beyond the limits 
of the trout’s domain, consequently, some form 
of fear is established in the brain of the trout 
through the medium of the sense sight whenever 
such unusual occurrences take place. On the 
other hand objects in the water, such as other 
fish, animals, such as beavers and muskrats, 
limbs and trunks of trees, boulders, hassocks, 
etc., have little or no effect upon trout and sel¬ 
dom create a feeling of fear in them. This is 
because these things form a part of their habi¬ 
tat and environment and are within their natural 
realm. 
It follows then as a sequence that trout inhab¬ 
iting streams where the water is shallow, clear 
and placid with their banks devoid of trees and 
shrubbery, will be necessarily the most difficult 
to catch because they are easily frightened by 
shadows and moving objects. As these adverse 
stream conditions change and become more fa¬ 
vorable to the angler they also become less favor¬ 
able to the trout, so far as arousing their emo¬ 
tion of fear is concerned. Trout like shade such 
