Area Trout Fishing, Catching Trout in Fisheries in Japan

Have you heard of a fishing style called “Area Trout Fishing?” This Japanglish stands for the fishing for trout in waters under control. These waters can be a part of a river, natural lakes or artificially built ponds. As one of the easy-to-go fishing styles, it is very popular in Japan.

In this article, the brief review of this fishing will be introduced, first. Then you will see some details of this fishing style. At the end I will explain a little of the history around this area trout fishing.

Image of the Donaldson trout, from this site.

General facts about Area Trout Fishing in Japan

In Japan, it is said that there are about 400 trout fisheries. They are fisheries which offer the service for anglers to enjoy fishing, and fisheries just to raise fish are excluded.

Most of these fisheries have rainbow trout settled in. Though rainbow trout is not a native species in Japan, it is widely accepted as a popular farmed freshwater species. Some places have the selectively bred rainbow trout, the Donaldson trout, grown up to over 50 cm, to add attraction to anglers. The details of this fish will be in the final section of this article.

Image of the Donaldson trout, from this page.

To categorize these fisheries, there are three types. 

The first one is the place where a person can get fish very easily. I can call it here, fast fishing. In this, anyone can catch fish immediately after placing the bait. The facility for this style is focused on giving people an experience to catch fish and serve these fish to eat. There is not so much a game feeling in it, but it serves the very important part of fishing in Japan in terms of experiencing the fishing culture including eating. 

In this fast fishing, people buy the fish they catch. These fish can be taken back home to eat, or some fisheries offer services to grill these fish for the visitors to eat at the spot. The costs to do this fast fishing are of the rental tackle (300 to 500 JPY) and the price of fish they catch (mostly 400 JPY per 100 g.)

Image of a fast fishing place, from this spot.

The second type of fishery is the place using the part of the natural river. In this, certain segments of a river are blocked to settle trout. You can enjoy the feeling of the natural environment. Some places are open for any styles of fishing, while others are only allowing artificial baits, fly or lure. The cost of fishing in such a place is about 3,000 to 5,000 JPY per day, it varies a lot depending on the control or facilities they offer.

Image of river fishery in Tokyo, from this site.

And the third type is the lakes or ponds. These still water areas are using both natural waters and artificially made ponds. Some ponds have settled the large size fish and many expert anglers enjoy aiming for it. In many places, fish are easily visible, but hard to get their attention and difficult to catch. Many fisheries ask anglers to do catch-and-release, and it makes fish very selective. The entry fee of such places is 4,000 to 5,000 JPY to enjoy it for one whole day.

Image of the still water type of fishery, from this site.

Fishing and tackles

Each of the above fishery types uses different fishing methods and tackles. 

Fast fishing if offering the rental tackles, of the simplest form of equipment. It serves the easiest way to catch trout.

Image of tackles for fast fishing, from this site.

It uses the whip rod of 3.6 to 4.5 m, or sometimes it is even shorter. The main line has a sphere shape float (orange/yellow one in the above image), fixed by the small rubber. It has a split shot and swivel to connect to the hook leader. The total length of the line is often shorter than that of the rod, in order to make it easy to pick the fish. For the bait, Ikra (salmon egg) is one of the popular choices you can buy at the spot or in the fishing store, as well as paste baits since it is easy to handle for any beginner.

In the stream venue of fisheries, the fishing tackles and techniques are pretty much close to the natural stream fishing. One of the ways with bait is to use a whip rod.

Image of traditional style in stream fisheries, from this site.

It uses a relatively longer whip rod, 5.4 to 6.3 m. The main line has several markers, and one or more split shots. Using baits such as ikra, larva of a moth (Nokona legalis), or worm (earthworms). An angler lets the rig flow with the river current, and gets bite signals with the line movements.

And in this river type fishery, lure fishing and fly fishing are the majority. In lure fishing, anglers are using 5 to 6 feet rods. The rod class is ultra light or light, since the lure weights are from 2 g to 10 g of minnows, spoons and spinners. The main line is monofilament nylon 3 to 5 lb, which is connected directly to the lure (sometimes with a carabiner.)

Fly fishing in still water fisheries

For fly fishing, line class of #3 or #4 with a rod of the length of 8 to 9 feet is the choice. 

In stillwater fisheries, most are open only for lures and flies. 

Fly fishing there requires a conventional tackles of #3 - #6. Its uniqueness lies in the creative flies.

One of the popular flies is the Gum-fly, made with a thin and long piece of pigskins or cowhides in different colors.

Some examples of Gum-flies, from this site.

Lure fishing in still water fisheries

For lure fishing, in this venue, anglers are selecting lighter and finer tackles. 

Image from this site of Globeride Inc.

This tackle is quite simple and normal in many parts of the world to fish in the smaller rivers or for the smaller trout or perch. But there are some unique points in some details. This rod of UL or L, with 5 - 7 feet length, has a slower or more parabolic action than the one used in other parts of the world. The reason for it is that it uses a very thin line. Fishing ponds have many anglers and it forces us to present the lure as natural as possible. To have naturalness, anglers select thinner lines such as 2 lb of nylon. To protect the line, the rod needs to work as a cushion. 

Image from this site.

The popular lures are spoons and minnows. Spoons of 1 to 3 g, with the length of 2 - 3 cm are often used. They are in different shapes to match the depth they trace or to realize the ideal movement at a certain speed of retrieval. 

There are special lures in this fishing. These are examples of such lures.

Image of area trout lure, Seed of Trout, Daiwa. Image is from this site. It sinks to the bottom with the attached sinker (black part), but the ball itself floats.
Image of Jackall’s Egg lure, from this site. Yes. It is a mixture of egg fly with a jig head.
Image of a stick lure, from this site. The manufacturer says that it spins in the water.
Image of another stick, but it is a flexible one, from this site. Obviously, it rotates under retrieval, and they say this rotation attracts fish.
This is made from match-the-bait spirit, from this site. It attracts fish with stable vertical sinking. Yes. It is imitating the sinking pellet, maybe.

History of trout fishery and fishing in Japan

It is recorded that in 1877, a person called Akekiyo Sekizawa, a government official who worked for the commercial fishing industry, started farming and settling rainbow trout. 

Sekizawa visited Wien for an International Exhibition, held in 1873, and realized the importance of the fishing industry. It led him to learn more about fish farming in the U.S. Namely, it is said that the place where he learned was the Cold Springs fishery in New Hampshire. In 1877, he acquired 10,000 eggs of rainbow trout from North America. Then, he could start fish farming in Japan. 

The first settlement of the trout for game fishing was done in 1902, by a businessman called Thomas Blake Glover. He was born in 1838, in Scotland, and moved to Japan from 1859 until he died in 1911. He had a summer house in Oku-Nikko. There as he wanted to do fly fishing, he brought trout eggs of Brook trout from Colorado and settled them in Yunoko lake and Yukawa river. It was the start of game fishing in Japan.

From then on, the farming of trout increased, and it amounted to 500 tons in 1943.   

Further descending the time over the World Wars, an American lawyer who worked for the US Military, Thomas Blakemore started the commercial fly fishing area, in 1955. This fishing area is still existing as Yozawa Fly Fishing Area, in the east of Tokyo. After the war, most of the visitors were American soldiers and their families. 

Image of creel and net, Thomas Blakemore used, exhibit in Yozawa Fly Fishing Area, from this site.

After this, there were many fisheries established by US military personnels, around western area of the Kanto plain. Some of these fisheries are running now, carrying the word “International” in the Japanese name of the facility.

Image of MP in Tokyo, after WW2, from this page. Such soldiers were enjoying fishing in the west of Tokyo.

As the Japanese economy was booming after the war, leisure activities became more popular among normal people. One of the favored activities was fishing then. People could afford cars to go far with equipment on the back, and fishing places were the destination for many of them.

Along with it, the production of trout increased further. It went up to 3,084 tons in 1971, with support of low exchange rate, these production were exported to North America. Even after the exchange rate was no longer fixed in 1973, the production was further increased and it peaked at 18 thousand tons in 1982. During this period, normal people’s lives became richer and had more leisure time. And major accessible natural fishing spots were gradually becoming saturated. And some artificial fishing areas were newly opened in the 1980’s.  

In the 1990’s, Japanese anglers came to know more about game fishing, and started to exercise the catch-and-release. It turned most of the fisheries from ‘catch and eat as much as you can’ style business to more sustainable style. In this period, the Japanese fishing boom was mainly targeting black bass, and it enhances the recognition of catch-and-release, because these anglers did not consider black bass for eating. 

In the following millennium, the concept of Area Trout Fishing was well recognized, as game fishing. The facilities were often made to be more user friendly, including children and female users. Along with this accessible direction, more gamification was coming into it. 

One of the factors of this gamification was the super trout, the Donaldson trout. This Donaldson trout was bred by Dr. Donaldson of the University of Washington, around 1970’s. It grows faster and bigger to raise the production speed of farmed trout. This gives some expert anglers more dreams in a simple fishery. 

Dr. Donaldson with a fish, from a site of the University of Washington.
Image of Hajime Murata, one of the most famous anglers in Japan, from this link.

The trout species are very popular in the western countries. When Japanese anglers take such fish, we think to expand the fun further, from our passion for angling. It may be interesting to test some Japanese approaches to these trout in your countries. 

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