From: 08/01/2015
To: 09/03/2015
Type of Water: Freshwater
Species: Rainbow trout
August fly fishing this year, if you will allow me to generalise, was not good at all. I don’t know what it was that caused this. It was generally warm, but that in itself should not be a problem. If the winter water is warming up in our stillwaters, that should be a good thing right? It should kick start insect and trout activity. But it didn’t seem to do that.
There was the odd fish caught here and there, even some good ones of around 20 inches, but hell there were stories of blank days on the stillwaters everywhere. My friend Dave and I had one such day on a club water in the Kamberg, where we crouched beside a dam with low water level, and carefully threw long lines and small flies, and worked them steadily, fast, slow, deep, and shallow, and it counted for nought. All I got wa View more...August fly fishing this year, if you will allow me to generalise, was not good at all. I don’t know what it was that caused this. It was generally warm, but that in itself should not be a problem. If the winter water is warming up in our stillwaters, that should be a good thing right? It should kick start insect and trout activity. But it didn’t seem to do that.
There was the odd fish caught here and there, even some good ones of around 20 inches, but hell there were stories of blank days on the stillwaters everywhere. My friend Dave and I had one such day on a club water in the Kamberg, where we crouched beside a dam with low water level, and carefully threw long lines and small flies, and worked them steadily, fast, slow, deep, and shallow, and it counted for nought. All I got was a photo of a chameleon that had disguised itself as cormorant poop on a bankside rock. Sneaky fellow!
But , as so often happens the fish started rising with abandon, just as we had to pack up to go.
Then September arrived. With it came some moisture. Not a lot, but an encouraging start. Jan Korrubel measured 7mm on Wednesday evening in Notties, we got 12 in Hilton, and there was light snow on the berg on Thursday.
Then Terry Andrews posted a picture of a ten pound rainbow on his “Trout Talk” group on facebook (if you don’t already belong to that group, you really should…it is packed with fly fishing news). Terry says it was from a lake near Impendle, but he is not saying any more than that. A scrutiny of his photos reveals some tell-tale bushes on the shoreline, but I am not one to tattle!
Jan Korrubel always does a recce of the rivers on 1 September…river season opening.
Jan posted pictures of the Bushmans, the Mooi, and the Little Mooi. They are not looking too bad! Low for sure, but nothing radical. The bit of snow we got in July and August helped, and now there is drizzle and humidity around. While holding on firmly to an all wooden table, I say maybe we will get some spring rain soon, and have one of those not necessarily common, wet springs that are so good for fly fishing!
I personally will probably wait until we have had a rain event of at least 10mm in 12 hours, before I head out to a river. I dislike planning a river trip only to be disappointed by low flows, algae and stagnant water, so I will try to hold out. But I think that on the back of Terry’s magnificent fish, and a few others that are coming to hand, I will plan something on a stillwater over the next two week-ends.
There I will probably concentrate on damsel and dragon nymphs, but I will be ready to try a midge in the evening. Evening rises to midges are a characteristic of spring, and you need to be ready for them. On the subject of midges, I dreamt up an idea while at the vice recently. Many anglers put a tiny amount of lead putty on their tippet when fishing a dry fly, to sink the tippet (and I won’t get into that huge debate on whether tippets should sink or float here!) I got to thinking that lead putty falls off, and doesn’t catch fish, so how about replacing the putty with a tiny midge with a glass bead. A size 18 or 20 will do. And not a metal bead…you don’t want it dragging the dry on the point down….just a glass or plastic one. I intend to give it a bash.
I might also try a black DDD as a snail imitation during the day. August is snail month in my book, but it feels like we missed August, so I will try it in September.
Until next month: Tight lines
