Unweighted micro flies for sea trout – The Usual Dark

This summer has been everything but generous with rain over the northern tip of Sweden and the rest of the Baltic region. Our rivers normally allow us to use sink-tip lines and medium sized flies the whole season, but not this year. This has forced me to a change in tactics. In some small and gin clear Norwegian sea trout rivers, small and unweighted flies have been used since many years.

During the darkest hours the sea trout search for their prey in shallow water close to the bank and for that reason the flies can not be weighted at all. The small treble- or double hook is weight enough for these stealthy flies.

Normally I’m a big fan of weighted flies but already in mid July the water in my home rivers was so low that you got stuck in the bottom when fishing with the regular flies. I had to change tactics and pulled the unweighted micro flies out of the sleeve. When hunting for sea trout in the baltic rivers I often let the fly float free out in the stream as slow as possible, especially in the dark. This is a really nerve wracking and exciting way to fish for sea trout. Fished with a single hand rod in class seven och class eight it’s so much fun and feels effortless compared to the heavy sinking line fishing I’m used to. This change of tactics gave me a couple of nice fish, both salmon and sea trout, in conditions I’ve normally wouldn’t have fished in.

A micro fly for salmon and sea trout fishing in my book is something between 2-3 cm and tied really sparse. I tie these flies on FITS tubing in size S with a 5-10 mm body made of SSS Holo Braid. FITS tubing in size S holds a size 10 or size 12 treble. And as you can see on the photos I use a fixed hook setup on my micro flies. A sparse wing tied in three sections and maybe then two turns of a soft hackle and you are done. I sometimes use a FITS micro cone if the conditions allow me to, just to add a tiny amount of weight and this also balances the micro fly perfectly.

For this blog post I have tied my all time favourite fly among micro flies and when fishing for sea trout. It’s called The Usual Dark and is the go-to fly for almost all my fishing buddies up here in northern Sweden. I always use JC-eyes on my flies but never on the Usual Dark. Don’t ask me why but it’s nevertheless a simple and deadly pattern.

I often get both surprised and amazed over how big fish can pay interest in the smallest fly you can imagine. But they do – believe me!

//Peter Ohlsson