First Session for Wild Brown Trout

There’s still not much going on with the bass locally, so I decided to try something completely different over the weekend. Over the years I have always been a sea angler and never really contemplated other forms of fishing, until I took up lure fishing and joined The Lure Forum.

This year I really want to diversify and try other forms of lure angling, trying for various species using a range of techniques. First up for me this year was the pike, and I had some good fun during the cold winter month’s while the sea was quiet. Although the Pike is a new species for me, there are a lot of similarities in the techniques I use while bassing and wrassing. One type of fishing I have always shied away from is LRF, the mere mention of those three letter used to make me cringe! Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one for fishing in puddles for blennys but there are certain species you can target using LRF, one of which was quite appealing to me, the Wild Brown Trout!

After reading Matthew Pickup’s great report on The Lure Forum, I decided to send him a message to see if he could point me in the direction of some Wild Brownies. Luckily for me Matt was keen to help, so we arranged to meet up so he could show me the techniques he uses. I went armed with various soft plastics ranging from 2″ to 4″ along with some 2g and 3g jigheads. Matt thought it would be best to use the 2″ lures and one of his 1g jigheads, he lent me a couple small lures and off we went.

The first few hours were very slow going, Matt had one small Trout o a micro hard plastic, something I will have to purchase for next time! We kept on the move hoping we would locate a few fish, I tried different speeds of retrieve and various techniques. I then had a couple of small knocks but no hook ups while using a steady fast retrieve. Matt then had another couple of Brownies before I finally hooked into one, it was only a small fish but gave a good account of itself on my Cormoran ULX.

My First Wild Brown Trout, a stunning looking fish, caught on a 2″ Trout Worm in white and 1g jig head.

Matt was now steadily catching fish on his micro lure while I was getting plenty of plucks but no hook ups. I then see that Matt is into a much better fish as it starts tail walking and jumping, it’s a new lure caught PB for Matt at 40cm, a beautiful looking fish.

Matthew had this stunning looking 40cm Wild Brownie on a micro plug.

We fished on for another hour where i continued to miss bites on the soft plastics, it was pretty frustrating. I did eventually land one more Brown trout (pictured below) before we decided to call it a day.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience of fishing for Wild Brown trout and i will most certainly return. I also plan to try my hand at fly fishing for these beautiful fish this summer.