01/06/2022 - May Sea Trout Fishing

Some Sea Trout Flies

Despite some horrendous water conditions with lots of horrid green blanket weed which even covered the crowfoot. The beauty of sea trout is they will run on spittle, in other words very shallow water. An angler said to me yesterday “Have you seen any salmon”? my answer was “I have more chance of seeing a leopard” we both laughed. Such is the problem with salmon numbers in our rivers these days.

I’ve had three sessions this month after sea trout, catching fish on two of those occasions which has made it worthwhile. My tackle is simply a nine foot 6 weight rod, floating line to match, with a nine foot leader with a six pound tippet. Snake Flies Are Often My First Choice-Followed By Waking Lures On page 92 James Waltham who I have had the pleasure to fish with writes “I would say that the Snake is the best lure in my box”. I have to agree with him, after the snake On dark nights, I mean when there is a thick cloud base where at time you can see just a few yards, a Waking Lure can prove very good, especially if you can fish the tail of a weir pool or where the water narrows up and you get a faster flow. Then then the Waking lure comes into its own, but don’t attempt to use this method on clear nights, also you will find you get some very savage takes, but many are missed. I also rate a steelhead pattern Green butt skunk, which I discovered on one of my many trips to fish Oregon’s steelhead rivers.

I have had Dave Riding tie up some slightly smaller size patterns of the Skunk for me which have proved good for chub at night. Picture shows some of my flies, at this time of the year, I find the dark patterns have proved best, sadly last night I hooked two good sea trout that broke off the point of a treble and escaped, occasionally I have had this happen but never twice. On Monday and Tuesday we had some good rain, around 1800 hrs on Tuesday the river had over a metre of water, though it wasn’t fishable masses of weed and other rubbish also the water visibility was around an inch.

Three Sea Trout

I fished on Wednesday with the river to myself giving me a choice of pitches, I chose to cover about eight hundred yards of water fishing all the possible holding areas, It was cast, fish, take a step, make another cast and repeat, then repeat again on all the chosen pools. I’d cover about two hundred yards of river fishing three small pools. At the third pool I connected with a good fish which certainly must have recently come up from the sea, silver with bright black spots really did fight like a demon weighing in an estimated 3lbs. Just before dark as I made my last cast, I got a second hook up, another nice fish similar to the first in fact like “Peas in a Pod” So ended a good session. The next night I had three fish of similar size again on the Snake. On Friday I hooked and lost two good fish, I was quite despondent if the hook point on the treble hadn’t broken I could easily had a brace of fish. Hopefully we will get a lot of rain this summer to keep our rivers flowing. Four weeks’ time I can coarse fish during the day, sea trout at night. I’m glad I have reached an old age and not having to work, you want hear me moaning.

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