Ok, they're not native like brown trout, but there's no need to turn up our noses at American rainbow trout.

They first arrived in British waters in the 1850s, around the time colonials were also transporting native brown trout eggs around the globe.

More plentiful and available now than the slower-growing brown trout, they are also easier to catch - if you happen to be fishing lochs and rivers stocked with rainbow trout.

Though it's too cold for them to breed naturally, they are still wild in the sense that they take their character from their native environment. So in a well-oxygenated loch with good feeding, this means a firm-fleshed, sweet-tasting fish.

However, a rainbow from an overstocked trout fish farm, where the feeding is not native and the water is too muddy, will not be at its best.

Sussing out the best quality farmed fish is best done on a whole fish when you can see and smell its quality. The edges of the fins should not be worn and split, nor the tail rounded and stubby.

Taste, though, is the final judgement.

Barony Country Foods, Carse of Ae, Lochmaben, Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, 01387 860487 www.baronycountryfoods.co.uk ; Wellsfield Trout Fishery, Stirling Road, Denny, Stirlingshire 01324 822800 www.wellsfield.co.uk

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