A dream come true

**martin_b** · 11-05-2009, 05:14 PM

So glad this site is back. Been checking back regularly over the past couple of months. Looks to be a great new beginning! I posted a little when I first discovered the site, and I hope to be able to contribute even more in the time to come.

A new beginning is coincidentally also a fitting description of my life these days. I have been living in the capital of the land of the vikings for the past twelve years, and the quality of the fishing there is, as is often the case with urbane areas, not as great as it could be. Therefore I have been wanting to move to the mainland for quite a while. Now this has finally become possible and we have moved our little family out into the country.

I am so excited. We managed to find the perfect location and the perfect house. A good drive away from pretty much anything. Anything besides trout streams, that is. We moved there just recently, so now the trout season's closed, but I did manage to fish a couple of the streams and coastal inlets a few times. Things are looking great. There's an abundance of larger streams with a lot of quality small tribs all over the place. This is trout country for sure. A few pictures of my recent explorations of the area:

A view over the coastal inlet:

A small forest stream running into the coastal inlet:

That same stream:

The small stream running litterally through my back garden:

The day after we moved in I entered the local fishing club's annual sea trout competition. Not much was cought
but I managed this one (from my back garden stream, the stream in the picture above) which gave me the first prize. It is common to kill some of the sea trout, as we have them in such great numbers. I normally do catch and realease, but since this was a competition i took him:

A short drive east there's a beautiful coastal inlet, surrounded by steep forested hills. There I experienced dry fly fishing in salt water to rising trout for the first time ever just last weekend:

Same place:

Had this little premature sea trout on an ant imitation very close to shore:

Cheers
Martin

**rossa** · 11-05-2009, 05:36 PM

Dry fly in the salt, that is somethign else. What are the lakes like there?

**palewatery** · 11-05-2009, 05:48 PM

Sweet.
That is one huge Fish for that size of stream.... must have been interesting trying to land that.

Cheers

**greendrake** · 11-05-2009, 07:26 PM

Nice post.I thoroughly enjoy seeing parts of the world that I will never have the chance to see in person.Dry fly fishing to rising trout,in the salt no less.Now that is amazing! Thanks for sharing the pics and enjoy living in that new area.
Will

**martin_b** · 11-06-2009, 02:04 AM

rossa: the lakes here are plentiful and pretty much all of them are stuffed with huge pike. Almost none of them are trout lakes; it used to be different a couple of hundred years ago, but not the only lakes with trout are so called "put & take" ponds with some freakish inbred rainbow trout. Our streams all over the country have greatly improved during the last ten years or so, so now we have some of the best sea trout (sea run browns) fishing in the world I'm told. The fishing for resident brown trout is not as good as it could have been, but with the removal of man made dams in many streams as well as bringing many streams back to how nature made them has resulted in the streams returning to being sea trout streams as nature intended it. You can still find excellent brown trout fishing, but it's being kept close by those who pursue it.

As for dry fly fishing in salt water, it happens sometimes during autumn when insects are blown out over the water in smaller coastal inlets surrounded by trees. First time I experienced it as I mentioned, but it is very fascinating! The big fish in the small stream, well it's sea trout on spawning runs in the small streams, and fish much, much bigger than mine are being caught every year. This year the biggest sea trout was about 17 lbs and a salmon of about the same size was also caught in that same stream. It is a lot of fun getting such big fish in these streams :)

**Mostyn** · 11-06-2009, 06:32 AM

Hi Martin,

How are you and the family? glad to hear the move went well; and boy have you found a cracking place to live, especially with that beautiful stream on your door-step! Does it remind you of the Taff Stream; but with larger fish? wow that is some trout from a small stream! Martin I hope to see you again soon!

Best Regards!

Mostyn

**gusstrand** · 11-06-2009, 10:52 AM

Up until about a month ago, I had some guys in Glasgow on my team. We've had a travel moratorium at work, but I had intended to get up there and make a for a long weekend to fish. Alas, the Company has changed some direction and my group has shifted toward Asian areas, but someday, I'll get to the EU and fish... I stull have staff in Dublin...

Love the locations there, Martin. You are blessed.

**martin_b** · 11-10-2009, 07:18 AM

Thanks for the comments guys.
Mostyn: thanks, the family is fine and happy. The stream in the first pictures is quite similar to tha Taff Streams, only smaller (very shallow) and has bigger fish hehe :)
Will I see you in a couple of weeks Mostyn? I'm going over to Wales to hopefully say hello to a few grayling from 25-29 November as you might remember.

Cheers
Martin