I drove to Tipperary first thing in the morning, to buy rainbow trout from John Hayden at the Araglen Valley Trout Farm, Ballynamuddagh, Araglen, Kilworth, Co. Cork. The trout farm is set in a beautiful valley, and has a lake for fishing in the summer.
When I got back to the School of BEES in UCC, Patrick Cross, Sophie Gahan and I constructed a set for the trout dissection. Tom O’Mara arrived to give final recommendations on lighting and positioning. We used one of the School’s wooden dissection boards. The grain of the wood looked very well on film, under the lights.
I had bought 6 fish and we rated them on ‘fishy attractiveness’, depending on their size, colouration and general appearance. I dissected the smallest female first, as a trial. The largest, most colourful fish was used for filming. This female fish was gravid, and the orange eggs looked great on film.
The dissection itself took a short time, but we filmed the dissection of four fish in total, and plan to edit the best bits together for the final cut.