Auld Trout...

I have never really had any real interest in Sea Trout fishing.  I suppose that might surprise a few people who know me and know how close I live to the river.  I know there are people who really enjoy and are extremely interested and passionate about sea trout fishing but it never really had much effect on me.

Before I begin, I'm not knocking anyone who chooses to fish for sea trout.  I sometimes envy them and wish I had their drive and interest. It would certainly help with passing a few weeks until the grilse started to arrive but I just cannot find any interest or get motivated enough to fish for them.

Don't get me wrong. I treat any sea trout I catch with the same respect in regards to handling and releasing as I do salmon but I just don't any 'buzz' or excitment out of catching them.

It is 5 years since I last targeted trout specifically.  Even that was one night only.  I left the house after 11pm and was back at 12:30am and had three trout as well as other plucks, rattles and bangs.  Maybe this is one of the reasons I don't target them?  Perhaps I find it a bit easy?

The last sea trout I caught after dark

caught on 23rd July 2013

I love the visibility involved in low water salmon fishing.  Seeing the fish coming for your fly and maybe not even touching it but turning away at the last second.  That gets my heart pounding as much as anything.  I just don't get that fishing for sea trout at night.  I like dry fly fishing for river brown trout and even stocked rainbows at lakes for the very same reasons.  The visibility of it.  I find it a challenge to allow them to take the fly and not lift too early and pull the fly away or strike too late after they've spat the fly out again.  Fishing at night feels a bit like sunk lure fishing to me.  Casting, seeing nothing and waiting on the pull.  It just doesn't stimulate me in the way salmon fishing does.

It is getting to the stage now with me, where casting and swinging a fly in a spate for salmon is beginning to feel like fishing at night for trout.  I almost do it as it is expected of me as a salmon angler to fish in 'nice' water.  However, it gets back to standing holding a rod waiting on a line tightening.  'The Take' is still a heart stopping moment but other than that, I find very little else exciting about fishing in 'nice' water.

A Sea Trout that took a small salmon fly.

In low water conditions, I tip-toe about the river bank, keeping low, keeping out of the water, trying to land the flies and line as delicate as possible, cringing when I make a bad cast. Then you get the pull.  Your heart misses a beat as you tighten the line and wait for the draw as a salmon heads back to the deep with your fly.  Only, that doesn't happen.  Instead this thing is ripping and splashing across the surface like a Springer Spaniel after a tennis ball, scaring everything in front of it.  I already know the next phrase which will leave my mouth.  "Ah S*%te, it's a trout"!  That's that pool wrecked for salmon fishing.  I know if I sat for five or ten minutes and let the pool rest it would do no harm but I've already spat the dummy out in a fit of rage and am half way up the field to the next pool or the house.

Perhaps it's the size of the Sea Trout we get here.  Maybe if we got some of the massive trout that the Welsh rivers get I might have a bit more interest.  Seeing trout online up to 20lb weight.  That, I would enjoy.  Here though, a BIG trout on the Faughan is about 3lb.  Most of the ones I encounter are not that much bigger than a decent brown trout in the 1-2lb size range.

Some 'dual purpose' flies which will take sea trout as well as salmon

I think the main reason for me not caring to fish for trout that much is the sheer regard and passion I have for salmon.  Growing up, that is all I wanted to catch.  I could catch brown trout as well as anyone on the river.  I have caught some really big brown trout that could almost be specimen size for the Faughan but they were 'just' brown trout.  No matter what I tried I could not catch a salmon.  I was catching sea trout but again, they were not salmon.  When I eventually did catch a salmon, I felt ten feet tall and had a feeling that I'd actually achieved something.  Perhaps it has been growing up all my life and almost seeing sea trout as 'by-catch' that has made me feel this way?

Regardless of how I feel about catching sea trout.  I am as delighted as anyone to see their numbers looking like they are increasing in recent years.  Last season maybe just wasn't as good, but the two seasons before that saw really good numbers in the river.  I caught 13 myself in 2016 that took my salmon flies so there must have been quite a few about for that to happen. That is the most trout I caught in a season since I stopped worm fishing around 2010.

Writing this in the hottest, driest June in history, I'd love a bit of water to swing a fly on and it might help to stock the pools up as at the minute the numbers of salmon, and indeed sea trout, in my local pools are very low.  As much as I love my low water fishing, it is just a waste of time if there is very little there to fish for.

The River Faughan at Dusk

I would like to see signs of a few trout arriving soon.  The trout can push on in low water conditions and when they do, sometimes a few grilse can push on along with them.   I went to the river just last night as it was getting dark to see if there were any signs of sea trout.  You don't even have to fish for them as you can sit on the bank and listen for the splashing and plops as they jump throughout the pools.  Nothing was seen or heard.  There is very little up the river this far just yet but with reports of trout being caught in the lower reaches, hopefully it won't be much longer until the trout start arriving upstream, in numbers, and bring a few grilse on with them.

Oh, for a good thunderstorm.