Searun browntrout in Sweden

When I took up fly fishing I thought myself unlucky. Living on the Swedish West Coast I have far to go to the famous trout and grayling waters. Later I have found good streams not too far off, but back then the oportunities seemed bleak. There was a great alternative though. There is good fishing to be had and I can get to good trout waters by bus, car or even bike! All I have to do is to go for searun browns in the salt instead of brown trout in rivers. If I'm not too lazy it takes me 25 minutes to bike out to water where it is not unusual to catch trout that average 15 to 17 inches and where fish of 22 to 24 is reasonably common. I'm talking length here since weight all depends on the time of year. Early season you can get fish that are still coloured or fairly lean and a 20 inch fish might weigh 2lb, the same fish in July or August could easily go to 4lb or beyond. So I'll stick to length. Besides that, I measure the length of all of the fish I catch and weigh just the odd one.

The season for sea trout here on the West Coast begins on 1st of April and on the South and East Coast on the 1st of January. Many years I "jumpstart" the season on the Southeast coast. There is really good fishing there and even though the trout are fewer in numbers they make up for that in size.

It is necessary to have a good pair of waders, and good boots with felt soles to go with them. Neoprene or breathable waders are by far the best as the water can be really cold in early season. A good waterproof coat and warm mittens are just as important.

I often start my season a early by making the 400-mile round trip to the East Coast. There tend to be two kinds of trout caught off the coast there in early spring. Some are fairly slim and still coloured after spawning. They are often big; you can often catch fish between 6 and 12lbs. The others are sometimes called Greenlanders; fish that have not spawned and are really fat, trim and silvery. Most of these fish are around 20 inches but you get the occasional big one and that is what makes it all worth while. A good January day with the temperature rising a few degrees, no wind, a warm sun and a promise of spring in the air. To hook and land a silvery, plump 8lb searun browntrout with a flyrod on such a day can really make the season!

Here on the West Coast the average trout is smaller, but the higher numbers make up for that and you still get some really good "Greenlanders". There is, if there isn't too much ice, some big fish caught on the first day of the season.A lot of the trout is still staying in the shallow water close to the river mouths. The shallows warm up faster so there is more food there. Ice is an obstacle sometimes; a friend of mine managed to play and land a 7lb silvery trout between drifting ice a few years back.

As soon as the water starts to warm up, the trout seeks areas with more current for food and oxygen. They still forage into shallow areas, especially at dusk and dawn. The food source in the sea shifts with the season as it does in the river. When the river fisherman who is a bit interested in matching the hatch shifts from stoneflies to mayflies to sedges, the saltwater fly fisher goes from small crustaceans to ragworms to shrimps and to fish fry. You can keep it simple, in the sea as well as in rivers. A woolly bugger, a streamer and a hare's ear nymph can cover most needs. But it's much more fun to change your flies with the season and whatever the trout is eating.

The first years the fishing for us ended in late May, we never really bothered to look for the trout after that. And when we stumbled upon them they seemed "hopeless" to catch. Then we found that searuns take up positions similar to freshwater trout, in areas with currents that transport a lot of food to their holding stations. And they are mainly active at night. They also have periods when they specialise in certain food, just as other trout get "pre-occupied".

Night-time fishing during the summer months can be spectacular; you spend a warm summer night fishing for rising trout that will take a dry fly. It is really nice to go out after work and sit on the still-warm rocks sipping coffee and wait for the first rises. And they do rise, or at least swirl. Much of the food searuns are after tends to come up close to the surface and the trout "announce" themselves. Not all of the fish are trout though; we get other species as well. Depending on where you fish you can get all sorts of surprises. One of the guys I fish with caught a 25 inch salmon. Other species we encounter are whitefish and the occasional mullet.

As the year moves towards the end of the season,the best time shifts from summertime with its nightfishing, towards more decent hours with good fishing late afternoons as the season winds-up. The food sources for the trout shift as well but late in the season there tends to be an abundance of everything. They do get picky though. late last season a friend of mine sat down and tied some fish imitations in large sizes. Apparently he'd been out and had a few hours before dark when there were a lot of fish moving but he had only had one take. The trout had all been into large, one to two inch forage fish and had just ignored his much smaller flies.

These are just some of the observations and thoughts around searun browns, the more I fish for them, the less I seem to understand. Hopefully there will be lot of occasions to learn more and understand less about this, my closest wild trout.