My introduction to Maine’s sea-run brook trout came on Down East brooks when I was in college.

Maine natives called these brookies “salters,” because the salmonids run from coastal brooks, streams and rivers into saltwater estuaries to escape summer temperatures, and to feed in the forage-rich habitat. Salters also run upstream in fall to spawn.

In my college years, salter fishing was popular enough in Washington County brooks to make the sport competitive because of angler numbers.

Part of the popularity lies in this: When April rains raise brooks that flow into estuaries on the coast, salters run upstream to feed. Brook trout that spend their life in freshwater may get lockjaw in higher water, but salters can be voracious during the spring freshet.

For example, tiny early April brooks on the Midcoast from Waldoboro to Belfast to Stockton Springs often flow high and cold, so action may begin there before salters head back to Penobscot Bay later in the season.

When European settlers arrived, salter fishing in coastal Maine rivers and streams was superb. Brookies in bigger waters grew quite large. In late April and May, the Passagassawakeag River around the ledges above Head of Tide, upstream from Belfast, still offers salter fishing.

The salter fishery has disappeared in many larger drainages, probably because of overfishing, but salters from brook habitat have escaped angler hordes. These days salters in tiny brooks run two or so inches longer than landlocked varieties in each brook, and when a school swarms upstream, the action can rock for 8- to 10-inch fish and a little larger.

In my college years, salter fishing was popular Down East but less so in the Midcoast. These days, fishing brooks from Stockton Springs to Belfast to Waldoboro can be excellent in early April, and signs of humans pounding these waters are scarce. Many of my brooks are tiny and may have no names on such maps as DeLorme’s Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, so anglers should never ignore any rivulet. I can easily step across some of my brooks, and at times they have thriving salter populations.

One way to find out which ones are productive requires fishing the water – and doing it often – and success calls for tenacity. One day a brook can be void of salters, and the next day it can provide fast fishing as these fish rush up from estuaries.

In short, don’t hit a brook one day, catch nothing and scratch that choice off the list. Later it can be hopping.

These brooks run across Route 1, and it requires careful scrutiny from drivers to see some brooks from the highway. Alders or swale may hide upstream in brooks north of Route 1.

Often, though, pools form on the ocean side of the road, close to high banks, so they are impossible to see unless anglers walk down off the raised highway.

The brooks around Belfast and Stockton Springs draw salters in early April, and in many of the silt-bottom waters, the sea-run fish feed on damsel flies and scud bugs that thrive in such habitat. Flies, lures or bait to match do well this month.

I’m strictly a fly rodder and like dark nymphs, streamers and bucktails on No. 10 or 12, 2x long hooks (Gray Ghost, Red & White or Mickey Finn). Any fly with yellow in it will usually work, but the little baitfish patterns are my favorites. Other anglers may try Trout Magnets, tiny Mooselook Wobblers, Swedish Pimples or angleworms, but an angler’s imagination can soar.

People often claim salters look bright like silver without gaudy colors, whereas brookies that stay in the brooks 12 months a year are more colorful. I’ve often thought that pewter describes salters better than silver, but that’s strictly an opinion. Salters are surely less colorful than brook trout that remain landlocked and have red spots, red, black and ivory edged fins, red or orange flanks and vermiculated backs.

No one knows why some brook trout in coastal brooks, streams and rivers run to estuaries and others in the same water remain landlocked.

When fishing a brook when salters are running, I usually catch the pewter-colored ones close to the ocean, and upstream my catch looks like typical brookies that never see the salt. A stretch of the flowing water between may have colorful brookies swimming with typically colored salters.

Salters require estuarine habitat to thrive, so the brooks in the Midcoast running into Penobscot Bay have good populations because of habitat.

In Canada, I have fished rivers where salters run into huge estuaries and average two pounds, and grow much, much larger – true wall hangers.

Salter action can be fast in inland brooks now. To have salmonid fun year-round in this state, we must find different targets throughout the year. Salters begin feeding binges in April – often before ice-out in ponds and lakes.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes, a writer, editor and photographer, may be reached at

KAllyn800@yahoo.com