Farmed and wild fish compared
A great many people
enjoyed eating game fish such as trout and salmon and I certainly appreciate this
fact having given away several hundred oven-ready trout to friends and relatives
over the course of several recent seasons.
There are, however, differences between wild fish and farmed trout and salmon
that need to be understood if you are to get the best out of such nutritious fish
as these.
Take salmon first then. The tinned salmon that you buy are Pacific salmon, not
to be confused with our own Atlantic salmon.
Nothing wrong with either species from an eating point of view though from a conservation
point of view no harm at all is done by eating Pacific salmon because having run
up the rivers to spawn they all then die.
Our Atlantic salmon vary a lot in taste depending on how long they have been in
the fresh water after leaving the sea.
They can vary in taste from excellent to quite poor, for having left the sea and
entered freshwater they do not feed at all, indeed they cannot feed then.
And since wild salmon in the British Isles are becoming endangered species anglers
on several fisheries now practise catch and release rather than killing them.
Farmed salmon are nearly always good to eat.
Now consider the trout. Though numbers of wild brown trout are so abundant in
some Scottish loches that you are helping them if you kill some to reduce the
competition for limited food, in most English waters brown trout are best returned
to the water unharmed in many fisheries.
Rainbow trout from fish farms are another matter.
They are available from both stocking fisheries and selling to supermarkets and
most farm-reared trout taste good if you look after them once you have caught
or bought them and before eating them or freezing them for future use.
Once caught or bought they need keeping cool and when killed they are best kept
in a freezer box until you get them home.
Do not, as some misguided anglers do hang the fish in the water for this allows
the dead trout to become waterlogged and ruined.