Bigger fish

I've said elsewhere, that the '08 - '09 season has had a slow start. Heavy rain through March and much of April left waters high and coloured. High water's not a problem, there's good high-sticking sport to be had, but coloured water pretty much kills the game.

So I have taken full advantage of the warm spell and low, clear waters on local streams and burns. But things are different this season.

I spent a lot of time studying over the Winter months; Ed Engle and Vincent Marinaro texts especially, and tying small flies. Ed Engle talks at length about keeping things simple, putting as little as possible between you and the trout. Marinaro is the mad scientist of fly fishing; theory and observation intertwined with oracle-like truth. I've taken this stuff to heart. Fishing has become a more intuitive pursuit.

I spent a couple of hours on Saturday, refining the #20 klinkhammers, that have proved so effective this month. The body is a little leaner, the wing post finer but a little taller and the ribbing more uniform. The trout don't give a damn; the more each fly catches, so the scruffier the fly becomes and the more appealing to fish (this is evidenced by the increasing strike-rate over time I've observed on every session this year). And yet each refinement, tweak and subtle modification translates in to sharper focus on the water, a stronger sense of there being less between the trout and me.

I got an hour on the water yesterday. After half a dozen smaller fish, a stunning wild brown trout was taken in 10" of water, at the head of a narrow channel. It's dorsal fin was visible as it snatched surface flies from the accelerating current, lost a little ground in the flow and then resumed position. Only a couple of feet downstream, in calmer water, there were numerous smaller trout ranging between 8" - 10", easier to pick off from a wider feeding area. To reach the head of the channel required a cast directly between two banks of weed, among rocks and boulders, before the current caught the fly and carried it overhead. I didn't attempt this immediately, preferring to get in to the swing of things with a few fish.

It took three casts to induce a strike, the first two just edging up the channel towards the largest fish in the pod. The strike was sensed before it came, more intuition.


This is a large trout for the waters I fish, maybe not the largest out there, but this is a GOOD fish at just short of 14".
(If you have a 17" screen, click on the image to see an actual size image. This is a beautiful, wild fish...)

It was also the first wild brown trout our youngest son had ever seen, and he hasn't stopped talking about it.