In this work, we demonstrate that surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signals allow to track down the localized surface plasmon local field spectral profile of lithographically-designed gold nano-structures. To this purpose, we used rhodamine 6G deposited on various gold nano-particle arrays. The local field spectral profiles obtained are discussed and compared to the far field extinction spectra of the particle arrays. Thus, we show that the normalized relative SERS intensities follow remarkably well the surface plasmon resonances for all the arrays we investigated. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.