The strong senses of the night

it easier or harder for fish to be successful in their hunting. In general, I prefer – and seemingly so do the trout – calm conditions and at least some amount of light. Many times, under such conditions, I have stood amidst feeding trout – the only reason trout venture out of the bladderwrack at night is to eat as much as they can!

makes the ordinary Baltic Sea look like a foreign planet. In this world with all its challenges for the senses, you can catch wonderful trout – and this is especially true on the surface!

During my time spent at night on the coastline, I noticed that even within darkness, even the word “dark” can have a variety of meanings. How dark a night actually is, depends on the position and phase of the moon, the time of year, cloud cover and the presence of artificial light. Trouts are very sensitive to these subtleties, and I give a more detailed explanation below in the text. First, the following principle is the most important: generally speaking, trout can see well at night and feed quite well too, but they reach their limits on particularly dark nights. The weather, especially water movement and surface disturbance from waves, can also make

But why don’t they just eat during the day? - one might ask... The simple answer is: they eat – when they can! In summer, however, the daytime conditions on the coast are often not ideal for hunting. Clear water, bright sunshine, abundant vegetation (hiding places for prey) are not the ingredients for a successful hunt. However, since the water temperatures are also high, the sea trout’s metabolism is running at full speed – and it needs a ton of energy. Since many creatures that trout prey on do venture out of their hiding places at night with some even careless enough to feast on the particularly nutritious film on the surface water, this means that the hunters’ hour has now come. Against the backdrop of the bright sky, the silhouette and movement of the prey are clearly visible. On some nights, the combination of hunger, high water temperatures and plentiful prey makes for a real feast, with some trout jumping a full meter out of the water.

I try to approximate the direction and distance of the noise, then I start to cast and let a good 20 meters of my fly line slide through my fingers. I can only guess that the line, including the leader and the weightless fly, has dropped down silently and, most importantly, stretched out. Very slowly and evenly I begin to strip in the line. Leading the fly in the dark requires one to concentrate and listen intently. My surroundings are seemingly picking up on my tense inner state. I am one with the sea, feel the movement of my fly on the surface, hear the sounds in the rings as the diameter of my line changes. But for now, no pleasant surprises. I’ve almost got my leader in the rings when I hear a soft gurgling sound right in front of me. I look deep into the darkness and do indeed spot a ring moving in a different direction. Immediately my fly lands softly in the center of the ring. At least I hope so, because my vision is quite limited. Again, I slowly begin to retrieve the fly. But again, nothing. This can be quite aggravating: You are standing amongst tons of fish and the sea trout – not exactly a squeamish creature – is decidedly rejecting what you have to offer. Night fishing in particular, trips up many seasoned sea trout anglers.

If you see a trout on the prowl in front of you by day, the take is all but certain. At night though, it’s an entirely different matter. Figuring this all out took me quite a bit of time – not that the learning is over – before I was able to discover a few regularities in their nighttime behavior. Since this article is intended to be a broad overview of night fishing, I cannot go into too much detail on this topic for now. A simple, but quite useful rule is that: Less light – less speed! Believe me: many hours of frustration went into discovering this relatively simple principle. As a coastal angler, one really has to get used to being gentle in the fly control, and even what feels slow is often still too fast...

On really dark nights and with super discreet fish, I seemingly move my fly in slow motion, sometimes just giving it a tug and letting it drift.

The best fish of the year I have to change something! The cast was on target, the fish certainly caught eyes of the fly. But there’s something it doesn’t like. I threw my line in the same direction as before – again only ten metres out. But before I started bringing it in, I waited four, five seconds. A soft splash right where I suspect the fly to be makes my pulse jump. Instead of raising the rod, I do a quick, long strip, a little pull on the line, then a bit more. I pull the rod to the side, and it’s now fully bent! In the darkness, I hear the full splash of a tail hitting the water. All my tension disappears: it worked! A seemingly good-sized fish plucked up my fly – while stationary – from the surface. The resistance is fierce, and my entire line whistles through the rings. Far out I hear the fish slap the surface of the water again. But the hook has a firm hold, my 0.25mm mono leader leaves little room for doubt in this regard. A few minutes later, the fish is just in front of me, and I can simply scoop it – shaking wildly – with my net. Only as I wade towards the shore, do I switch on the headlamp and look at my catch. Covered in bladderwrack and with water pumping through its gills, there she is: perfectly round and 50-some centimeters long, with a blue shimmer running down her back. This fish is perfect, it gave me a wonderful experience – full of gratitude, I quickly released her back into the dark water.

A fish appeared in the shallow water in the bladderwrack. Thanks to the moonlight, the author was able to place his fly accurately. Now he guides it through the trout hunting grounds with the utmost concentration.

In general, the fish themselves are a great side catch of summer fishing! At no other time of the year would you find so many fat and fit sea trout on the coast. After a tough winter, these fish are in good shape again, the silvery fish of the spring are round and veritable silver bullets and those river-running trouts in the autumn have hardly formed any spawning suits yet, they too are in top shape. But despite the perfect conditions of summer, we should practice moderation! Once one finds a spot with good fishing, it often runs good for weeks and brings great fish on demand. Even if we only take one fish a day, it can still be quite nice. Many of the splendid summer trout start to change color in July and August, thus hinting at what they will be up to in a few weeks.

There was one now! While the fishermen are checking their mobile phones to make sure they are in the right place, a noisy trout on the prowl confirms this for them.

Catching fish at night doesn’t require exact imitations. What is crucial are the size, approximate silhouette and most importantly the movement of the fly! In most cases, the author gets by with these four models and a number 5 floating line.

We should let some of them have that chance.

To my mind, the matter of which fly to use at night is simple to determine. Depending on what one is looking to catch, I use models with hook sizes 4 to 10. You can catch fish with dark patterns, but also with bright ones. Black is good, but this probably matters more to the fisherman than to the fish. The patterns themselves are not complicated. I like to use a Gurgler, but on some nights, the fish prefer flies that go a little deeper below the surface. Simple flies with little tails and body hackles over amply dubbed bodies will catch their part. Another simple but often applicable rule: The louder, faster and more boisterous the trout hunt on the surface, the better surface designs like Gurglers will work. However, all my night flies are weightless because I am convinced that the trout catch most of their prey on the surface in the summer. This hunting behavior already points the way to the night trout. Unlike during the day, fishing at night is very rarely blind fishing for me – despite the darkness. On the contrary, just like when I was fishing for mullets on the coast, I only fish when there are fish in the area. But since you can’t usually see much at night, it’s like in the scene described at the beginning: I wait and listen. On many a summer night, I basically didn’t cast the line out at all because I simply didn’t hear any fish. Were they not there or simply not active? I don’t know. Whatever the case may be, I don’t enjoy fishing blindly in the dark. If I don’t hear anything, I keep walking, if I don’t hear anything after some distance, I change places. This can take on real proportions: some nights I listen along five, six or more stretches of coast –without even putting the fly in the water once. This is of course quite an extreme

approach. You can also go to a wellknown, good summer spot and fish, listen every now and then and fish again. Most good spots will have a fish passing by as dusk and night set in – and some will go for your fly. Here, everyone is on their own.

But what is a “good summer spot”? In the literature, one reads that summer spots are, for example, reefs with a lot of currents and coastal stretches with deep water under land. In fact, I’ve had good catches at times like this, but especially in the hour or two after sunset and at the onset of dawn. In the middle of the night, however, I often prefer coastal spots that would otherwise not be customary in the summer. Channels, shallow mussel reefs and above all shallow water areas are the places where I prefer to be at night, but currents and somewhat deeper water should at least be nearby. In these places, I usually find either quite a lot of fish or none at all; the spots are either teeming with fish or have none at all. In fact, it often happens that the activity is confined to a very limited area within a given zone. It’s easy to explain why the trout roam around here in the dark: there’s plenty of prey in the shallow water with structural diversity. Some soil types, especially some aquatic plants and substrate particle sizes, are host to certain forage animals that are more active than others at one time of the year or another. In summer, many of these little animals are more active at night than during the day. In addition, when the sun is shining and the water is clear, the trout simply cannot reach their prey in the shallow water. At night, this is not an issue. The trout does not shy away from even the shallowest water, and their victims cannot catch on to them in good time. In my opinion, the most important prey to imitate at night are shrimp, copepods and worms. As already mentioned, it’s not about making the imitation visually plausible – what matters is their size and, above all, movement on the water surface!

Since all night fishing like mine is highly dependent on prey availability and activity, it is only logical that it is restricted by time. The food animals sometimes only have short phases of activity, which are in the hour or two after dusk.

A very active trout showed up several times in the water, which was only 30 centimetres deep, and ended up eating the wrong prey.

However, it can also happen that they swim around all night long and offer themselves to the trout on the surface. On such nights, the trout often only stop feeding at dawn. Since I can’t bring myself to leave when the fish are active, I fish straight through until morning. I used to be able to take that in stride, but now I need a few nights’ sleep to get back on track. That’s a price, however, that I’m happy to pay – for me, very few fishing experiences can rival the intensity of surface fishing at night on the coast.

Almost the best thing about summer fishing is the fish. Never throughout the course of the year do you catch nicer and stronger sea trout.

This article was made in collaboration with Fliegenfishen, part of JAHR MEDIA, during a presstrip in 2022. As always, a professional and artistic narrative with fantastic & beautiful pictures. Havørred Fyn thanks you for the use of this article and all the pictures that make up a large part of the content in this magazine.

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At night, it’s quite common for a strike on the surface to miss its target. This is often a sign of a fly moving too fast. However, when the fish sit still, that’s usually a good sign. Misses are rather rare here.