Beech mast fish boom ?

I do not argue in support of science to try and convert the passionate anti-1080 crowd, they are a lost cause and no amount of evidence would convince them otherwise. I partake to make sure anyone who is uninformed or with just a passing interest gets the correct information. Yarmoss, trout often just smash mouses us they swim across a river. I do not know wither they scavenge dead ones.

Yarmoss - I've never actually seen a mouse getting eaten by a trout (only the pics of fish's stomach contents), but have caught a few on mouse flies and they usually seem to prefer the "dead drift", ie. letting them float down-river as if they were dead. I've even had two rainbows race eachother from either side of the river to try to get there first in the middle of the day, both moved about 5m over to the mouse fly. I've heard other people say trout prefer the live mice and ignore dead ones, but haven't found that to be the case myself, although I did catch one at night once stripping a mouse fly across a pool. I have had trout try to snatch my more regular flies off the river bank after a bungled cast too, one almost beached itself as it leaped at my flies which lay just out of the water at the river's edge (due to a freak wind gust, not my mediocre casting!!) lol. They can be bizarre creatures the trout. madpom - Thanks very much for the link. I've asked this same question on another forum with highly enlightened individuals and got told I had to go through the forlorn process of an OIA request.

One interesting thing that is always bought up by the nay sayers is the number of times they go into an area that hasnt been poisoned during a mast and there is lots of bird life. What they dont see is what happens 6 months later. During the mast there is food for all and everything thrives There is plenty of food for mice and birds alike so both do well. Rats and stoats are inherently lazy and a mouse is a far easier feed than a bird so they eat mainly mice and leave the birds alone giving the illusion of a healthy forest. Then the mast ends and the mice die. Birds just eat something else. But there are now lots of rats and stoats looking for whatever feed they can get and very soon no birds.

Thanks @militraris and @contour_lines_are_the_enemy. You learn something new every day :)

"I partake to make sure anyone who is uninformed or with just a passing interest gets the correct information." See, I don't want to sound harsh here, but this method of dis-info is exactly why the general public has no idea of the actual facts. But this seems to be standard modus operandii for every government department these days. @contours, the info madpom supplied is easliy avaliable online, but what the op are talking about elsewhere is the OFFICIAL UNEDITED DATA which they use (read doctor) to make up their sham reports. This is only available by OIA request, a bit like cell phone text messages from the PM... I am going to leave it there anyway, only a fool argues with a fool.

I suppose that's right, trout in particular have a notoriously weird diet. It would have to be dead mice that fall into the water, I don't some trout launching itself kamikaze fashion at some mouse drinking from a river. Too improbable.