Sea Trout Night Fishing
Like the salmon, the seatrout is a migratory fish, spending half the year feeding at sea and returning each summer to while away the long summer days in the river of its birth until spawning time in the autumn. Sea trout are found in northern Europe from Iceland, through Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Spain and Portugal. In some ways, the sea-trout is like both the salmon and the brown trout, in others, like neither. A difficult fish to lure during the light of a summer’s day, in all but spate conditions, the sea trout will sometimes play the angler’s game under the cover of darkness.
If the salmon is the king of fish, the sea trout might be called the “prince of darkness”, a mysterious, magical creature which appears, literally out of the blue, in many British rivers every summer, lying immobile and unnoticed during the light of day and becoming active only during the hours of darkness – active enough, on occasion, to take a fisherman’s fly. For this reason, those who pursue the sea trout are themselves, by necessity, and perhaps by nature, nocturnal creatures, venturing out at dusk and fishing through the wee sma’ oors of the night on a river running at or near summer low level, often shrunken by summer drought.
Sea Trout Flies and Fly Tying
Mature sea trout, like salmon, cease to feed in any meaningful way on entering the freshwater streams of their birth. They have built up reserves of energy through a winter of rich sea feeding which will sustain them through the summer months until they are ready to spawn in the autumn. They have no need of food and are not inclined to expend energy by hunting for food. Nevertheless, they can on occasion be persuaded to take a bait or an angler’s lure or fly. The best chance of catching a sea trout in the low flows of summer is by fly fishing during the hours of darkness, particularly the first hour or two after sunset. Much depends on the night temperature, a mild night being most favourable.
Fishing the fly during the hours of darkness is the most popular, and the most effective, method of sea trout fishing on British rivers. Such nocturnal activity does not suit everyone but, to a relatively small band of enthusiasts, the pursuit of sea trout on the fly at night can be highly addictive, keeping some of us from our beds on many a summer night. The flies used are many and varied, each river or district having its special flies and each angler his own personal favourites, most easily created if he ties his own flies to match his ideas and fancies. It seems that sea trout may be caught on a surprising variety and size of flies, fished in many different ways.