My biggest Sea Trout

 Is a river without sea trout a river at all! My first fish from a river was a brown trout but these wouldn’t put a proper bend in the rod but the day I hooked my first sea trout is one I could never forget. I remember running to the river and spinning a blue & silver toby. There was a bit of weight in the toby as I vaguely remember nearly casting into the bushes on the far side of the bank. Anyway it started lashing from the heavens and there was an angler just above me fishing with worms. We just called him the priest. What happened next was quite funny to him because as I was spinning, a sea trout hit the toby. A fresh sea trout, sea liced, and a young angler of maybe 10 on the other end of the rod would be a funny sight, thinking about it now. I had lost so many fish before this one and had cried myself to sleep so many nights because of lost fish, I was determined not to lose this one. Usually I would be so afraid of losing a fish, I would play them so much that inevitably I would lose them at my feet. I never used a net as for some reason I felt it took the sport out of it. This time I just tore him out of the water like a torpedo. For a young angler I needed to catch a sea trout and a salmon to become an actual angler. So to be fair I wasn’t thinking about the health of the fish, obviously these days things are a lot different. That was my first sea trout, I have a picture somewhere, for some reason when I have looked at it in the past, I would well up and get emotional. Who knows why! I suppose life hasn’t been easy at times and looking at my innocence back then makes me sad, maybe. Also the killing of fish is something that I cannot do anymore. I am much happier seeing fish swim back into the river. 

My Biggest Sea Trout, Brandon Bay, March, 2014

The biggest Sea Trout that I have ever had the pleasure of catching was the above Sea Trout. We never weighed it but it fell to a Sand Eel on a three hook flapper in cloghane estuary.