By Thomas Hansen
The number of sea trout around Kerte minde and the Hindsholm peninsula is no greater than on the rest of Fyn. Nevertheless, this area attracts many anglers for the simple reason that it does not take long to get from one fishing spot to the next. This is a major advantage if you want to spend as little time as possible in the car and as much time as possible out by the coast. Whatever the wind strength and direction, you are never far from a fishing spot with acceptable wind conditions where you stand a good chance of catching a sea trout. Personally, I generally fish from a boat in this area, which gives me the advantage of being able to visit a lot of different locations in one day. When you sail around, it is even more evident that most of the saltwater anglers have gathered around the bestknown spots. Along with the best or most popular fishing spots comes the challenge that it can be a little more difficult to tempt the fish to take. The sea trout may already have seen quite a few lures and flies, and they may even have been in dramatically close contact with them. They will not pounce on just anything and could start to behave like the trout in a stocked lake, where lots of fish get caught immediately after trout have been released, but subsequently get more and more difficult to catch as time goes by. On the coast, there are no daily releases of fish, of course, but if you substitute the word arrival for stocking, the phenomenon is rather similar. The sea trout stray around the whole of Fyn and makes brief or longer stops at various locations. In my opinion, they are easier to catch during the first couple of days after they have arrived at a new spot. One spring a few years ago, I was fishing at a wellknown spot where all of a sudden the fish were quite plentiful, but so were the anglers. Although it was difficult to leave a fishing spot with hundreds of sea trout around the boat, I nevertheless decided to move on and seek out new grounds. I spent the next two days checking out a number of locations. It took until around midday on the second day to find fish. There weren’t as many sea trout at this spot as there had been at the spot I left the day before. On the other hand, there was
only me at that spot, and within a day and a half of leisurely fishing, I had caught 16 magnificent sea trout before moving on to find ‘new’ fish.Often, there are extensive stretches of coastline between the familiar spots where, basically, hardly anyone goes fishing. Here, there are new, lesser known – or even wholly unexplored – sea trout spots just waiting for someone to go it alone. After all, the sea trout have not read this guide book, and they are free to swim anywhere along the coast. Finding them can just take a bit of time. Using aerial photography is a useful tip for your research work. When you look at the coast from a bird’seye point of view, you quickly gain a completely new view of potentially interesting fishing spots. Look for the little details in the photo that reveal cuts in the sandbars and large rocks. A large, dark splotch indicates a mussel bank or a small thicket of seaweed. On an otherwise sandy stretch of coast, a few narrow bands of seaweed could be just the site for a sea trout spot. You might be able to wade out to the next sandbar and cover some interesting water from there. One final tip: Don’t be afraid of sand! Many sea trout anglers are somewhat ‘allergic’ to a sandy bottom, but sandy stretches that do not immediately appear to have potential can offer surprises as long as even a few narrow, dark bands of seaweed are present.