Irish Sea Trout

The sea trout is something of an enigma.  It spends the greater part of its adult in the sea each year, yet is is seldom seen or caught in salt water.  Like the salmon, it too returns to the rivers in which it was hatched to spawn on the redds, before returning once again to the salt.

Sea trout do run the rivers of the east coast of Ireland but it is in the west of the country, along our rugged Atlantic coastline where the best runs of sea trout are found.  The scores of rivers and hundreds of loughs that are found on Ireland's west coast are the summer and autumn haunts of this sea going member of the trout family.

On the spawning grounds the progeny of the sea trout share their environment with those of the brown trout and the Atlantic salmon.  The juvenile sea trout is very similar in appearance to that of the brown trout.  As the sea trout grown, it develops organs lacking in the brown trout and, as the parr becomes a smolt, salt secreting glands develop in its gills.  Its colour changes too, resembling more a salmon than a trout.   The smolts then migrate to the sea, some returning to the river of their birth during their first summer on a spawning run. Others spend more than a year at sea before making the trip back to spawn.  Thereafter, an annual spawning run is common for sea trout.

Sea trout are a prized catch and catching them has become somewhat of an art form in Ireland.   Many of the rivers that they run in this country are referred to as "spate" fed rivers.  That is to say, the river level is dependent upon the rainfall on the hills and the subsequent run off into the river systems.  In many areas of western Ireland sea trout and salmon congregate in the estuaries awaiting the flood in the river that will allow passage into the systems of waterways that drain this remoter region of the country.  Waiting too are the anglers!

A network of local knowledge, weather forecasts, telephone calls and sitting out the storm clouds, brings the sea trout angler to the river a day or so after the rainfall.  He knows the the boggy land will be saturated and give up its waters the the waiting rivers.  With the summer rain come the sea trout!

Come Dawn & Dusk

The loughs of Ireland are a "stop off" for the sea trout as they make their way upstream via the lough to the small streams where they will eventually spawn.  Secretive and shy creatures, they do fall to many a trout or salmon fisherman as they tease them out of their watery haunts with traditional, wet fly patterns.

But it is in the rivers where the best sport can be had when fishing for Irish sea trout.  Small, lightly dressed flies, the dressings of which have been handed down though generations of anglers, are fished in the runs at the tails of pools.  There, behind the the boulder, under the bridge or in the shadow of the bank, lie the sea trout.

Dusk and dawn are the preferred times of day to fish for these bars of silver that visit our river systems and which give us so much pleasure to both catch and to eat!