- Sea trout
Brown trout/sea trout
An Icelandic sea trout and not so abnormal in size at all. Photo by Valli Ragnarson.
This is genetically the same fish of course. Some biological urge is responsible for some of the trout swimming to sea for furthering their diets. Like salmon, they eat and grow bigger, they return to spawn and make the same cycle as long as they live. They can get quite old, much older than cousin salmon. While very many salmon only make the one journey and others are lucky to live to spawn twice, three times being a rarety, sea trout have been known to spawn 8 to 10 times as well as entering the river 2-3 times before maturity alows them to spawn. As a result sea trout may become far bigger than many salmon ever have the chance to become.
Huge brown trout, 8 to 10 pounds in river Varma in south Iceland. Photo by gg.
The brown trout is native in Iceland. They were here when the ice age glaciers retreated and they made inland lakes and rivers their own. In some places they became landlocked while in others they had access to sea and became sea trout. The old ice age strain gets very old specimens and there are a lot of some very big trout swimming around up here in Icelandic waters. Some of the brown and sea trout fishing available in Iceland is unrivalled anywhere in the world.
