Interesting. I know you said still water but on the Cut Off channel between Fordham and Hilgay I watched the fish in clear, usually still water during the early part of the season for a number of seasons. This is a few years ago and sometimes there are no fish on view for me to observe. However at the time the fish moved clockwise.
This was more than one species. I can say definitely the Bream and Perch moved in this direction. The Perch would herd the fry along the bank and you could watch the lillies shudder as they came towards you and again as they moved on, this could be followed as they moved up one bank and down the next between the bridges. The Bream were just as easy to see early in the morning aa they would porpoise along the normal there normal patrol route.
It could be down to whether the fish are left or right handed. I can't remember which flying Ace it was that let off a loud bang behind the shed as he was taking a photo of the pilots in the squadron but ninty percent of them all looked over the same shoulder even though the noise was directly behind them.
Some fish will certainly only take a fly that goes past them on a particular side. Sorry I know I'm talking about a river again but I have talked about this with my fishing buddy on more than one instance and he is a massive believer that sometimes Trout will only take down one side. Or maybe some Trout only take down one side. He has proved this to me on the clear waters of the Hampshire Avon where we have presented the same fly to the same fish down one side of the fish a number of times and no interest has been shown but as soon as the fly goes down the other side it takes ( I know there could be millions of reasons for this ). The fish does not appear to be blind in one eye when it is landed and the best explanation we have is that it is a "lefty" or "righty". Not very scientific I am aware.
Also now that I'm thimking of it most of my most memorable fish have gone to there right when hooked. This again could be for almost untold reasons but it could also be because most fish favour one side over the other.
n I'm bound to think of many more instances of fish favouring one side to another but I also go to university on a Thursday and I'll try and ask a fish biologist if fish have a favourite side and have a "handedness".
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Just found the first link. I'm bound to find more.
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http://www.lssu.edu/faculty/gsteinhart/GBS-LSSU/BIOL333-Fish_Ecology_files/Hori 1993.pdf
Sorry Chris, going slightly off on a tangent here but this link is far more interesting than my first one.
It shows that there might even be a link between the handedness of predator to prey fish.
Trying not to be patronising if anyone doesn't know Phenotype is the physical expression of a genotype.
This means something might be carrying both the left or right handed gene (or only left or right handed genes) but it is expressed as being either left or right handed.
Sorry I can see I'm going to post more of these as my interest intensifies. I hope someone else finds it interesting.
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Southpaws: The evolution of handedness - life - 30 April 2010 - New Scientist - mcX's posterous
This one is a good overview of handeness but when you click on the laterlism link you don't get the full article. So much for knowledge being shared. However it does hint thet shoaling fish have a greater tendancy to show handedness than solitary species. I'll try and remember how to use my atlas pass and give a quick acount of the nuts and bolts of the research later.
It appears I'm the only one either on line or interested at this moment and so I'll try and stop posting links untill either tomorrow or I get over excited.
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I didn't say but Chris I think it's a good first thread. Keep them coming!