Fishing for sea trout is a winter sport which is gaining in popularity. Although most fishermen think you can only target sea trout in the dark while fishing in a river, this is simply not true. You can catch sea trout along the coastline and well as within estuaries. Look for areas with streams as the sea trout may use them to travel to their spawning grounds.
Fishing for sea trout is often thought of as a sport reserved for fly fishermen. Contrary to popular belief, you can lure fish for sea trout. Lure fishing for sea trout can allow you to cover more ground as you can cast further with a heavy lure than with a fly.
In this article, I will go over what a sea trout is, where to go to catch them, as well as the equipment you will need to catch them.
What Is a Sea Trout?
A sea trout is the same species as a brown trout. Sea trout are anadromous meaning they, like salmon, migrate form the sea to spawn in freshwater.
Brown trout go to the sea due the increased competition for food in the waterbody they inhabit such as a river or a loch. By migrating to the sea, sea trout can find an abundance of food. In the sea, sea trout can rich foods such as shrimp, smaller fish such as sandeels, gobies and blennies.
What Equipment for Sea Trout Fishing?
We will now look at the gear you need to fish for sea trout using a lure rod and a fly rod as well as the reels and popular baits for catching sea trout.
Spinning Gear for Sea Trout
Spinning/Lure Rod
A 9–10-foot lure rod is ideal for fishing sea trout. The rod should be able to cast a weight of 10-40 grams. This will allow you to cast both small and larger baits. The length of the rod will allow you to cast baits at a greater distance. This is especially important for casting to rising fish.
When choosing a rod, make sure the rod has good guides and fittings that can withstand saltwater. Otherwise, your rod will corrode quickly.
Fixed Spool Spinning Reel
When choosing a fixed spool spinning reel for fishing for sea trout, the two main considerations are resistance to saltwater, size, and weight.
A fixed spool reel for sea trout should be saltwater resistant so it does not suffer from corrosion from saltwater. To increase the longevity of your spinning reel, you may want to give it a rinse/clean after fishing.
I recommend a fixed spool reel in size 3000-4000 with a large spool for helping to increase casting distance.
Choose a lightweight spinning reel as when fishing for sea trout you will be doing a long of casting to make sure you cover plenty of water. A lightweight spinning reel will help to prevent any casting fatigue and keep you fishing for longer.
I recommend loading your fixed spool reel with braided mainline rather than monofilament. Using braided line as your mainline will provide you with better bite detection as it does not stretch as much as monofilament. As a result, you will be in direct contact with your lure.
I recommend a braided mainline with a breaking strain of 20-30lb as it the diameter is low enough to help you maintain a high casting distance whilst staying connected to your fishing lure. Also, a 20-30lb breaking strain will be strong enough to fight a fish and direct it away from snags which could potentially lead to lost fish.
What Bait to Use for Sea Trout?
The best baits to use to fish for sea trout are lures or flies depending on your preferred style of fishing. Although sea trout may take other kinds of baits. Lure and flies are the best methods for catching sea trout. When it comes to fishing for sea trout, blue and green colors work particularly well.
What is the Best Lure for Sea Trout?
There are several great lures for catching sea. Typically, the best performing lures for sea fishing are the abu toby, other spoon lures, and soft sandeel imitation lures.
Abu Toby
The Abu Toby is a classic lure popular among trout and salmon anglers but, it catches lots of different fish species. Great Toby lure colors include blue, green, and orange.
Soft Baits for Sea Trout
Sandeels and other small fish are one of the main sources of food for sea trout. Therefore, fish imitating soft baits are ideal for targeting sea trout. Some of my favorite sea trout lures include the sidewinder sandeel and soft plastic shrimp imitations.
Sidewinder Sandeels
Sidewinder make a variety of sandeel imitation soft baits. Their sandeels look realistic and have an extremely life like motion when retrieved.
Their small range skerries eels and super slims are ideal for targeting large sea trout. I prefer the green and pearl colored sidewinder sandeels for sea trout fishing.
Red Gill Flasher Sandeel
If you want to try a smaller sandeel imitation, I recommend the Flasher Sandeel by Red Gill. It is a great little sandeel imitation soft bait.
I would suggest replacing the size 4 Aberdeen style hook with a saltwater hook as I have found the hooks provided are of poor quality and corrode quickly. I have fish and sandeel eels due to the hook breaking off by a fish or by a snag.
Do not let the hook quality deter you from these sandeels as they work great not only for sea trout but for many species of fish.
Fly Fishing Gear for Sea Trout
Fly Rod
A good versatile fly fishing rod for sea trout is a 7-weight that is 9’ in length. If you are likely to be fishing in strong wind conditions, I would recommend going up to a 9-weight rod to enable you to cast more easily. The rod should have a fast action and be resistant to saltwater.
Fly Reel
The fly reel should also be saltwater resistant and have a good drag system. The reel should be loaded with backing and your fly line of choice.
When fly fishing for sea trout, you will be covering a lot of water, it is important to have a lightweight reel to prevent your wrist from tiring out and getting casting fatigue.
Sea trout vary in size, and you may end up hooking a monster, choosing the right reel can often mean the difference between landing the fish and loosing it.
A fly reel with a wide arbor comes in handy when fly fishing for sea trout as it allows for plenty of backing to be added to the reel, it enables a fast retrieval rate for when those large fish want to run, it also reduces line memory.
Fly Line
The most used fly lines for catching sea trout are slow intermediate and intermediate lines. These slow sinking lines will be the most effective when fishing in the cold winter months during the day.
While you can use floating lines or floating lines with a sink tip when sea trout a feeding from the surface, in most cases, these situations will be rare. Instead, use floating lines when fishing for sea trout at night in the summer months.
If you need to fish your fly deeper, try a sink 1 or sink 2 line. If you do not see any fish feeding and you are not getting any bites when fishing your intermediate lines, changing to a sinking line can often produce results.
Flies for Sea Trout
There are many different fly patterns invented for catching sea trout. The best fly patterns for sea trout generally have some blue or green material in their tying.
Try using fly patterns that imitate the natural prey of sea trout, fry patterns and shrimp patterns are particularly effective at catching sea trout.
Where to Catch Sea Trout?
If you want to catch sea trout, you will first have to locate them. Sea trout can be found patrolling shallow waters to escape big predators. They also need areas where there is a rich source of food. When predators, such as seals, are around sea trout like to spend their time in seaweed and other vegetation to hide.
Seaweed and other underwater vegetation can provide sea trout with a fantastic opportunity to find sources of food.
Murky waters created after storms or in an estuary, where rivers meet the sea, are great for catching sea trout. The murky waters help to hide sea trout from predators, and it makes sea trout less timid.
In clear waters, a realistic imitation pattern should be used. Sea trout are visual hunters, and it can be difficult to fool a sea trout into taking your lure or fly in clear water. When the water is murky, sea trout tend to strike confidently.
Some of the best places to catch sea trout are where the rivers meet the sea. Here, sea trout move down towards the river at high tide to feed. Some anglers believe the sea trout make use of areas closest to the mouth of the river with lower salinity to get rid of sea lice.
When to Fish for Sea Trout?
It is commonly thought sea trout can only be fished for at night or in the dark. This is not true; you can successfully catch sea trout during the day. Tides, play a more important role in when you should fish for sea trout.
Try fishing 3 hours before high tide and 2 hours after high tide. This means you will be fishing for sea trout as the they are brought in with the coming tide as well as a or a couple of hours as the tide is going out and they start to move out with the tide.