SEA TROUT
By ANTHONY BUXTON,
THIS is the time of year when right-minded persons are turning their thoughts to sea trout, for these fish, fattened by good living in the sea, choose by a happy instinct the holiday months of July, August and September to ascend the rivers for the excellent purpose of producing more sea trout, and incidentally to provide sport just at the moment when fishing is in highest demand.
" Sometimes," wrote Lord Grey, " I think that sea trout fishing is the best of all sport," and yet in my opinion it is engaged in with less knowledge and less skill than any form of fishing. Few people realise that a sea trout's vision is extraordinarily acute and that their lack of success is due to their detection before ever their fly lands on the water. It has become the fashion in many places to believe that success can only come at night, and that it is useless to expect to catch fish in clear water and full daylight. Nothing can be further from the truth, and I remember demonstrating its fallacy to the local fisherman on a little burn in Mull. I had been dumped by the sea pool and told that the water above it was useless except at night, but I remembered the advice of a Norwegian parson. " Mr. Buxton, you shall fish where they tell you not," and I peeped round the corner above the sea pool. From a merry stretch of rippling shallow water a little sea trout leapt into the air. There was not much covert, and I crawled slowly into the water below him and knelt there, to flick a dry " tup " upstream. The tup looked inviting dancing down the ripples, and the little sea trout of which there were several were pleased with it. There was no natural fly on the water and they rose as if they were surprised by the appearance of any insect, bouncing in the air to drown it, and then if time were given them, picking it up under water. My squatting position attracted the attention of a fisherman on the opposite bank, who was new to such methods, and he very kindly invited me to come upstream and put my fly over a pool in which fishing was considered hopeless except at night.
This pool looked very attractive with deep water curling smoothly to lap a black rock-face and glide over a shallow tail under an overhanging tree. It was obvious that the difficulty lay in getting within shot without being seen, but there was some bracken on the bank and a certain amount of shade, and I used them both to reach a spot below the tree from which the lower half of the pool could be reached. By this time spectators had increased, but they were made to squat in the bracken, and a gaily leaping fish proved that the stalk had been successful. The fish were unconscious, and the first to be hooked was pulled quickly down stream to avoid alarming his fellows. The pool was full of them, the fishing delicate, for the water was very glassy, and though the trout were small they were very gay. Things went well till the top of the pool was reached, but there I lost my reputa- tion, for the fish of the day rolled solemnly up and, before the assembled company in the bracken, I missed him clean. The bigger the fish the slower should be the strike with a dry fly, and a Catholic lady gives the following formula : " When a big trout comes for the dry-bug, shut both eyes, say half a ' Hail Mary,' and then strike." I am not out to make converts, but that is good advice.
There are other memories of a tiny pocket in the rocks just above the point reached by the tide, where Sea Trout in another river that had run dead low, could be inspected from a shady bank. The little pocket was packed with fish just arrived from the sea, but it was difficult to rise more than one or two without disturbing the whole company, and it was found best to visit the pool often but never to stay there long.
Also of a long sea estuary, the haunt of Widgeon and Mal- lard, where for an hour before low tide, where the channel was narrow and water had shrunk to a series of shallows with a few deeper stretches, the Sea Trout chased the cuddies, and made exciting boils at a wet fly with a silver body " tigged " in jerks through rather muddy water over a most un.solid bottom. Sport at such times was often brisk, if a herd of trout could be found by the sight of a leaping fish, but they might be anywhere in the estuary, and in any case when the tide turned they ceased to feed. The fish caught were always full of cuddies, and though their appearance was disfigured by the number of sea lice they carried on their persons, they were delicious to eat.
Sea trout seem very subject to moods, but the theories formed as to the reason for these moods are apt to be upset by the fish. The right mood for the fisherman is dead certainty that he is going to get a rise at every cast. If he can maintain that state of mind when all the facts are against him he will be ready for that instinctive tightening to the smallest pluck at his wet fly, or for the ordeal of self-restraint when a glistening silver fish rolls slowly up to suck in his floating insect. Above all, let him remember that a sea trout's eyes are better than his, that they are hard to approach and quick to detect the smallest semblance of " drag " or sign of clumsiness on the part of the fisherman.
Anyone who spends a long day after sea trout will not be inclined to fish on long after sunset, and indeed he is better to supper and to bed, but there is an attraction of its own about that first half-hour after the light has gone. I like a black fly well sunk for such occasions and have a theory, which is very likely wrong, that the trout are feeding on Sedges just emerging from their cigar-like cases. Excited splashes of rising fish that can be heard but only occasionally seen keep the nerves on a constant throb and the sudden thump on the line as a fish takes the fly in fast water is one of the greatest sensations in fishing. Darkness enhances the thrill of the " thump."
Some people like the moon for night fishing, but in my experience its first appearance puts every fish to the bottom of the river. In clear water I can only suppose that they see the fisherman or his rod, and when the moon comes up I hurry home to bed.
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