Trout

Since it's a day that ends in a 5 (the 15th of Fructidor to be exact), the French Republican Calendar features an animal: the trout.

I've only had trout once, when one of my writing clients, novelist Curt Colbert (who's written a series of fabulous retro detective novels, including Rat City, Sayonaraville and Queer Street), brought me a trout as a bribe since he had gone on a fishing expedition instead of doing his writing. It tasted great but I just have a hard time eating anything with eyes.

Since I don't have much to say about trout, I thought I'd tell you my only fishing story. When I was about six years old, my family spent a week at Lake Arrowhead, where my aunt and uncle had a cabin. We went out in a rowboat on the lake and I caught a fish, probably a trout. We threw it in a bucket and took it back to the cabin and when we got there it was still flopping around so I insisted that it be put into a pot of water. I'm sure my parents thought it would be dead by morning but they agreed. But when we got up in the morning, I ran out the back door to check on my fish and found it swimming round in circles in that tiny pot. So in a long procession, with me clutching the pot, we went back to the lake and dumped the trout back in. That was the last time I ever fished.

There is a brief article on trout at Wikipedia. I had not idea they are members of the Salmon family:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout