Sea trout - Ahrex Hooks

The platoon of misery

The question is not how to fish, but why you do it. The author and his fishing buddies do it out of necessity. It’s more important than life and death to them to escape the human world, step in to water and wave a stick. Left on the shore is their misery and worries. Standing in the water they find freedom, healing and occasionally a fish.

Battles are lost and won with tongue in cheek and always celebrated with mountains of cake and an endless stream of fresh espresso coffee. To the band of brothers it’s more important who you fish with than how big the fish is; except for the ones lost.

You may not learn a lot about catching more and bigger fish, but reading these stories is like holding a mirror up in front of yourself getting a little wiser. The small why is a big one.

This artickel is written by Danish photojournalist Søren Skarby

Høtyven

Shrimp flies have always been popular for fly fishermen and especially for saltwater fly fishermen they are a “must-have” in the box. The Scandinavian coastal fishing for sea run brown trouts is now one of the cornerstones of Danish fly fishing and the Danish sea trout love shrimp flies. In this week’s blog, we’ll focus on a new pattern that has gone from strength to strength and proven its effectiveness to coastal sea run brown trout.

New hook – Anadromous Nymph HR416

*Big sizes salmon calls for a strong hook. Photo: Jesper Lindquist Andersen*

Fishing for migratory fish – anadromous species – such as salmon, sea trout, steelhead or rainbows and trout both from the sea and the great lakes on their way to the spawning banks has been the purpose of this new hook that we have been looking forward to introducing to you.

Cry Wolf

Countless saltwater flies have been named the key to success when it comes to catching sea trout in the salt. This time, however, the wolf is actually coming. Martin Votborg is the originator behind The Wolf and has been fishing it and tweaking the design for over 20 years. He says without any uncertainty that The Wolf catches sea trout all through the year.

By Peter Lyngby

(this artickle has been published in the danish magazine “Sportsfiskeren” and the online magazine “In The Loop Magazine”)

Keep an eye?

*Ultimate Candy Mackerel by Giovanni de Pace*.

I was invited to tie flies at the annual Black Friday event at Nordic Anglers’ show room last Friday. When I tie flies at events like these, I always focus on tying patterns that don’t take too long. Maybe with a focus on something relevant for the season and if I can fill a vacant space in my own box, even better. I tied a simple sand eel imitation (well, many), gave some away, talked hooks with some of the customers and even took home a few flies.

Rounding off

… the Swedish sea trout season. Unlike in Denmark, where fishing for sea trout along the coastlines is open all year, Sweden has a season opening January 1st and closing September 15th, of course to protect the trout migrating to the rivers to spawn. We received a little report from Mr. Trout, Peter Alexandersson, who’s had a good season. Here are his words on the 2022-season and a series of pictures.

Predator and prey

Most predatory fish change behaviour over the season. They are found in different places and feed different times of the day. Why? They are predatory and follow the behaviour of their prey. So I suppose, in a sense, that you can say they have only one behaviour – they follow their prey. If you’re fishing for predatory fish, and I suspect most of us are, the key to catching them is often to understand what they’re feeding on and the prey behaves.

Midsummer Murders?

Not quite, but if Barnaby was as good as catching sea trout as he is catching murderers, he’d be an excellent fly fisherman. In Denmark tradition has always been that the big upstream migration of sea trout to our larger and smaller rivers being at midsummer. They do arrive earlier, the first ones, but it’s true that by midsummer, it pays off to intensify efforts.

FRESH OR SALT?

Fishing trout in still water has a lot in common, whether it’s salt or fresh water. The trout live much in the same way: The feed and grow to maturity in the large still water and migrate to streams to spawn. Whether fresh or salt, the habitats also share some of the same types of prey – gammarus and baitfish/fry being two of the notable ones. In both fresh and salt water you can even be lucky enough to find trout feeding on terrestrials.

Old Wets

To me there are few flies that embody the whole essence of “a fly” as old, classic wet flies. There are plenty, hundreds, to choose from and I’ve featured some of them in previous posts. A few decades ago, most new fly tiers began with a Red Tag and once the basic techniques were in place, next on the agenda was learning to tie feather wings. Usually the subject was a March Brown wet. It’s simple (until you get to wings), catches well and challenges the fly tier. Hen pheasant wing slips aren’t hard for the experienced fly tier, but they’re not the easiest either.