New member saying hello. Looking for trout knife.

Ya bet! Good times, my latest a California Golden trout hybrid:

 

Whoa! Gorgeous fish! Never seen anything like that.

 

3 1\2 inch Rapalla fillet knife is what I've always used.
They ain't expensive and they ain't got a fancy steel or grip, but they hold a decent edge and are easy to resharpen when needed.
The sheaths that came with the ones I had lasted a long time, too.

 

Those little natives are a lot of fun. In my area, we have native browns, rainbows; and a few brookies in the mountains. This is the first place I have ever seen native stream bred rainbow trout. Most of the waters are warm water fisheries here, so you have to do some searching for trout streams. The biggest trout tend to be in the tail water fisheries below hydro dams. Typically the trout fishery extends downstream about 5 to 10 miles below the water release point.

@midnight flyer I believe you have some trout (stocked) in the Guadalupe River.

 

Dedicated Bird & Trout's are fun to have and to use, but more expensive than a Martiini or Mora.
What to choose is up to personal taste, but as You think of the F2z, I'll mention my experiences with the F2k.
The F2k is the older now discontinued version with 4,5mm thickness instead of the F2z at 2,5mm.
It was on sale at a 50% discount when I got it.

I couldn't warm up to the otherwise excellent rubberhandle and kydexsheath, as I'm more of a traditionalist.
So the knife saw little use until I made a rehandling project out of it.





A leathersheath was made for it and since then it has a permanent place in my fishing bag.
The slim blade makes it a good boningknife and it can do filleting when camping.
As I was inspired by Scagel knives, I gave the blade a somewhat Scagellike profile and this lenghtened the cutting edge to 120mm.
I find this bladelenght around 5" very comfortable in fielduse, compared with shorter or longer blades.
It makes the hand stay out of fishslime and yet it is easy to clean and pack in the bag.

I think You have got a lot of good advice in this thread and if You decide to order a custombuilt knife, I'm sure Horsewright can fullfill Your wishes for the perfect B & T!

Regards
Mikael

 

Made a pair of shotgun chaps for a guy from England. He was gonna pick them up when over here on holiday. We were very similar in size and he asked if I'd ride in them a few times to break them in. So I did. He stopped by and while he was here asked if we could go for a ride. So we saddled up a couple of horses and gave him a tour of the ranch. He was super pleased and I asked him about it. I just thought it was cool a guy from Europe was picking up his order. He'd worn his chaps on the ride of course and said now I don't have to pay VAT on them when we go back they are "used". Creative. I've found that many of my customers will order a big batch of stuff not just knives. Guess it makes the ding easier. This set of kitchen knives went there a few years ago before CITES treaty regs kicked in:





Young lady with a Gordo:



Opening another box of Horsewright stuff at Christmas time in Sonja's kitchen. Thats one of the kitchen knives on the cutting board three years later:



This damascus bowie was in the box, BIG bird and trout:



Sonja loves the sandwashed silk wildrags (a cowboy would never wear a scarf, its a wildrag) we make too, this sage green one was in the box:

 

I have used the newer F2 and it works well for cleaning fish. The 2.5 mm thickness is as thick as I would want to go in a fishing knife.
Some smaller options include the North Arms bird and trout in S35V and the Moki Banff in VG10. The North Arms bird and trout knives are a good deal, and have a thin 1.5 mm thick 3.6” blade with G10 handles.
The North Arms knife is similar to the Bark River, but at much lower cost. It comes sharpened at too acute an angle of 25 degrees inclusive, so you really need to put on a microbevel before taking it out for fishing. It is an excellent knife.

 

I'm not particularily skilled in cleaning & filleting, but the F2k does it for me and I think it's a good slicer.
The spine has a full distal taper from the guard to the tip, meaning it tapers in bladethickness all the way to the tip.
This means I can also use the blade close to the guard for rougher work, while the tip is slim for fish.
A good allrounder so to speak.

About the F1, yes like so many knives the F1 certainly do the job and I have used one of mine on Trout.
However, the F2 is better on fish and can do light camp duty's too, so I mostly use the F2 when "Gone Fishing".

 

I think knife choice really depends on just how much trout fishing you do. My younger brother literally fishes for trout two or three times a week (at least), but especially in the fall of the year when they are spanning. He is a trout fishing machine!! He catches in the neighborhood of 5,000 trout a year (catch & release). I think he averages over 100 trout per day each time he fishes year in and year out.

So if fishing is something you occasionally do and camp or woods type use (or just general use) more dominant, I would lean toward the thicker blade and vice versa. I always have a folder on me in the woods or along the stream, so I pretty much always have a thin blade with me if I need it. The LionSteel small Opera folder (in stag) was one that tickled my impulse buying a couple years back. But the blade is just too thick for me and could be much thinner and have the same utility. I think the F2 borders on too thick but a great all around use blade.

The little fixed blade I pictured earlier in the thread would be a great fishing knife but not a good general use woods knife. The Bark River Mini Kephart might be a good small general use blade if it is pointy enough for poking fish when cleaning them. You can see a picture of one (with a blue handle) on a recent post over in the ongoing Kephart thread here in general.