Black and grey tattoo of a trout with a small fly lure above it on the inner forearm, drawn in traditional linework with dotted spots.

Trout and fly lure on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large trout swims vertically up the inner forearm, with its head near the wrist and its tail toward the elbow. Bold outlines, fin rays and dense dot stippling define the fish, and a small fly lure sits just above its nose. The tattoo is shown in black ink and grey tones against pale skin, with a grey pavement and black trousers in the background.

Traditional Dotwork Forearm Fish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The trout had taken my father's Greenwell twice that August and twice shaken it loose, and by the third evening I had stopped thinking of it as a fish and started thinking of it as a neighbour who would not pay his debts.

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Dad had tied the fly himself the winter before his chest took him, bent over the kitchen table under the lamp while the wireless murmured about coal rations. He used a hackle from a red cockerel bought off Mrs Ackroyd at the farm gate for threepence, and he wound the body with peacock herl so it caught the light like oil on the beck. I had the box now, and this was the last fly in it he had finished.

Below the packhorse bridge the water slides deep under the alders, and the trout lay where the current folded back on itself. I cast short and let the line drift, and the rise came without fuss, a dimple and then a mouthful of brown and gold. This time I did not strike too early. The fish ran for the weir, the rod bent into a shape I had only ever seen in Dad's hands, and the reel sang until I was standing in the water to my knees with my jaw clenched.

When I drew it into the shallows it lay on its side, too spent to fight, its spotted flank lifting and settling. I thought of the kitchen table and the threepenny feather. I worked the hook free with wet fingers, and the fly came out whole. I held the trout a moment in the cold current, then let it go, and watched it turn once under the alders before the shadow slipped back into the deep water where it belonged. The fly went into my hatband, where it still is.