Tony Entwistle
8 Aug 2024
Trout Spotting is More About Accumulating Experience than Being Born with Good Eyes.
To budding anglers, spotting trout may seem a total mystery. However, the ‘dark arts’ are more about accumulating experience than being born with great eyes. Trout spotting is seldom a case of seeing the whole fish, but rather more about recognising a series of keys that indicate a trout’s presence. No-one has summarised the various keys to spotting trout in New Zealand waters better than Les Hill and Graeme Marshall, in their classic book ‘Stalking Trout’ (1985). When the light conditions are difficult, spotting gets even tougher.
1. Seek out water with a dark background, e.g. foliage or a high bank. On ‘bad light’ days the enclosed nature of small streams offers better spotting opportunities than wide open waters.
2. Take advantage of any extra height. Climb up on any boulder or log that is slightly higher than others around it.
3. On dull days, wearing a wide brimmed hat is noticeably better than wearing a cap.
4. Cup your hands around your eyes to eliminate as much surrounding glare as possible.
5. Ninety percent of feeding trout are found in less than ten percent of the water. Concentrate our efforts on the most likely holding lies.
6. The human eye often detects movement in its peripheral vision, so take advantage of this and scan by slowly moving your head. Many trout are first spotted out of the ‘corner of the eye’.
7. By focusing your vision on the bottom of the river and picking out individual rocks and other features, any movement of a feeding trout is more easily detected.
8. When fishing big water on open rivers, try adjusting your position to minimise the glare. Rather than the standard approach of walking parallel to the river, try approaching the water at right angles. Start back from the river and move slowly towards the water, scanning slightly upstream and downstream of your position. This might not be the best position under good light conditions, but it is amazing how often trout will hold for a single angler who approaches slowly this way. It is far better than not being able to spot trout at all.
9. Once a trout is spotted when fishing alone, don’t change position but fish to it from where you stand.
10. Learn from mistakes. Repeatedly spooking trout in similar lies while trying to spot them, suggests that prospecting with a few blind casts into those lies might be a better approach. It is no coincidence that the best trout spotters I know, are also the best blind fishermen I know as well. Successful trout fishing is usually a blend of both techniques.
11. One final thought … do experienced anglers, ‘just spot’ a trout, or do their eyes simply confirm what they were actually expecting to find?
