Sea Trout at Night on the Fly.

                   

Having had great fun fly fishing for sea trout at night i decided to put together some clips to make a video. Starting out with the standard sea trout patterns, i tied up some of my own patterns that i had used when i was younger and they caught me some good trout. So i crossed those designs with some others that i got when fishing the Towy in Wales and tied some flies in long shank 10,s and 8's but the trout were bending these with ease. I changed over to size 8 B175 hooks and they proved to be the best hook for the job, even going over to strong worm hooks in size 6 and tying my new patterns on these worked very well. The river i was fishing is very awkward to fish with a very low tree canopy, plenty of fallen trees and underwater roots so a strong short fly rod is necessary. I had tried to fish with a 5 wt 9ft rod but was taken to the cleaners twice by big trout so i upgraded to my old switch rod which is a 10ft  for a 7wt rod, casting was very hard having to invent some low side casts and a lot of kneeling down to keep the rod away from branches in the dark. Using a minimum of 10lb breaking strain Airflo G3 flurocarbon and strong hooks i was able to keep full control of the trout in such tight spaces and not let them get into the roots or fallen trees which they tried to do as soon as they were hooked.

Ideally a 7ft or 8ft for a 7wt rod would be perfect for this river because of the low tree canopy and small fishing areas and any cheap floating line, as fishing from a bank has its own problems at night such as line getting stuck in brambles, mud, sharp stones, gravel and this also causes issues with casting as the dirt fouls up the rod eyes. Even cleaning the lines and rod eyes after every session didn't cure the grating of the eyes as the line went through when casting because as soon it made contact with the bank the next night the line would just pick up more dirt again. Even using my bass line tray was too awkward with catching on the brambles etc., so that is why a cheap floating line was best for the job because as soon as the season was over i threw out the line which had cracked and worn through in some areas. Using a two fly cast was the best method for this area as any more flies would only have got stuck in the branches and net etc., also using a big point fly and a size 12 dropper worked very well and having the dropper close to the point fly ( under 3ft ) and the cast under 9ft in total was perfect. In the dark if you bring the flies close into you when fishing most of the time the braided loop will travel in the top eye and this gets stuck there and can be a pain when trying to re- cast at night, so keeping the cast shorter than the rod stops this from happening as many of the trout would follow the flies all the way in and take just at my feet. Also having the small dropper flies in a BRIGHT pattern and the large point fly in a DARK pattern definitely took plenty of fish. BRIGHT flies consist of silver bodies such as Teal, Blue and Silvers, Butchers, Medicines etc and DARK flies have black or dark bodies such as Black Pennells, Teal and Black, Bibios, Zulu's etc., so using a combination of either a DARK dropper with  a BRIGHT point fly or vice versa worked very well for me. During the night many of the trout would switch off the BRIGHT flies and onto the DARK flies and add to this the size combinations as sometimes they preferred the smaller flies you could keep catching all night long. The older darker trout always took the DARK patterns and the closer it came to the end of season the DARK flies took almost all the trout and again in big sizes on the point. I must definitely take some time out next year and get some good photo's of the big sea trout that i catch and write an updated book on techniques and flies for fly fishing for sea trout at night .

Fly Fishing for Monster Wild Brown Trout at Night.

                     

This video was made over two nights when i fly fished for these monster brown trout with wooley buggers. The water level was very low and this meant that i couldn't fish some of my favourite rivers, especially the one where i caught that monster wild brown from last year that was nearly 20lbs. I had one big trout in the early season when we had good water levels that weighed in at almost 15lbs and there is a picture on the video that shows how broad and big these trout are. The most productive lure was my brown wooley bugger with a red body,  you can see this lure at the end of the video and using  different retrieves i was able to pick up some nice trout.                                                   

New Video On Fly Fishing For Monster Brown Trout At Night .... Out Soon.

 Just a selection of wild brown river trout caught while fishing with Wooley Buggers during day time as a practise session for my night fishing video where i caught a number of big monster trout up to 15 lbs. I am just finishing the editing of the video and it should be up on my youtube channel soon including a video of fly fishing for seatrout at night.

Wooley Buggers

Here is a selection of the Wooley Buggers that i use at night for the Monster Trout, they come in black, olive ,white and brown in various sizes, some with cone heads for added depth. Using short sharp retrieves with a floating fly line makes the cone heads come to life, darting up and down they look like a wounded fish and that is what the big trout are after.

Lines for my Switch Rod.

Here is a selection of the lines that i use with my switch rod. On the rod is my Forty plus clear Intermediate fly line, i also have a Forty plus floating , a Di3 ( Brown ), a Di5 ( Grey  not in picture ) , a WF 7 floating  and a Floating line with a 12' super fast sink tip ( 8" per second ). Having these lines covers all aspects of fishing for the Monster Brown Trout, sometimes the trout are on the bottom in deep pools so you have to search them out with fast sinking lines that will get the flies down fast. If they are feeding  higher up in the water column then the floating and intermediate lines will cover that, you are only going to get one shot at these trout so you have to make it count. Putting on a strong salmon tapered leader will help in the turn over of the heavy flies but the most important thing is to have a very strong braided loop ( Roman Moser micro-loops ) on your fly line. Make sure to cover the braided loop with two coats of either Storm sure or Aqua sure glue to add strenght to the loop, the glue also stops the fly line cracking just above the joining. Don't use super glue as it will crack the fly line at the joining and you could lose your dream fish.

SWITCH RODS.

Click on to this link to find out about switch rods, lines and reels ,www.salmonfishingireland2012.blogspot.com