The Birthday Trout

This story is from a few years back, when coastal fly fishing in the cold waters of Norway was still new to me.

On the first sea trout trip, with a friend, I backed our van into a flagpole, making a big dent, and we did not catch a single fish. Not a great success by any measure, but stubborn as I am, it did not end there. I wanted to be better prepared for the second trip, so I asked around for some tips and quickly realised that on the first trip we had been fishing the wrong places at the wrong time.

The advice I got went something like this. There is no general rule for where the trout are at any given time, which was annoying to hear. An hour or two around high or low tide is usually the best timing, but low tide can be best on one beach and high tide on another. Look for kelp-lined rocky shores around 1 to 3 meters deep, with deeper water close by. The trout often patrol the edge of the drop-off. (We have since written it all down properly: sea trout fly fishing in Norway.)

We set out on the second scouting trip a few days before my birthday in mid-May. I had told my partner that my only wish was a big sea-run brown trout.

Mid-May on the fjord. Snow still down to the treeline.

The sea was, and still is, foreign and frightening to me. It’s deep and you never know what’s down there. I am definitely more of a freshwater fly fisher, and saltwater was a new world. But the stories of big sea trout kept pulling me in.

On the second day of the trip, on a remote shore, I came across a spin fisher. He was very interested in my fly fishing setup, and we started talking even though we didn’t really share a language. He was a war refugee from Ukraine, and with very limited English and a heavy Eastern European accent he explained how he had ended up in northern Norway.

He kept looking at my rod and reel and repeating “Interesting device.” We showed each other fish photos on our phones and filled the gaps with Google Translate. Eventually he asked if I would like a cup of coffee, and I said yes.

He made a small fire between the rocks and balanced an old, scratched Teflon kettle on top, filled from a little stream. My first thought was a full year’s dose of PFAS in one cup. My second was that I was far too polite to say no now. When the water boiled, he lifted the kettle off the fire with two sticks, balancing the whole thing in mid-air, looked at me and said: “Interesting device.” Then he pulled out two plastic cups, already partly melted from earlier brews, pointed at them and said: “Plastic. Melt. Must wait.”

It was the worst cup of coffee I have ever had, by a long way, and I thanked him for it all the same. He seemed very happy, and very passionate about fishing.

Out into the cold water.

It was my birthday, and the days before had produced no trout yet, so it felt like now or never.

I had spotted some trout before, but they seemed extremely wary and easily spooked, so I had lengthened the leader, gone to a thinner tippet and tied on a small size 12 shrimp that was basically just pink dubbing on a hook.

I saw a big swirl just a few meters away, right next to the bladderwrack. A quick roll cast, a swirl, and I lifted the rod. The fish shot off like a rocket, pulling out line. I knew right away that this would be a big one. It made run after run toward the deep water, and every time it came back in I had to keep it out of the bladderwrack. The tug of war went on for what felt like an hour, with me praying the line would hold. It was a long time before I could even see the fish for the first time, and seeing it made me even more nervous.

The rod bent double, and staying that way.

Finally, I got the trout close enough to net it, with my partner filming from the shore. I don’t know how she arranged it, but there it was: the biggest brown trout of my life so far, on my birthday.

Into the net.

The trout measured 86 cm and around 5.5 kg, skinny for its size. It had likely just returned to the coast to feed after overwintering in the river. By the end of the summer, this trout could have been a kilo or two heavier.

I looked down at the rod, then out over the fjord. Interesting device indeed.