The recent Snowbee teams of 4 competition showed that pulling lures is no longer the best option at Siblyback. Many of the fish were taken on dries and this was definitely a successful method in the latter stages of the competition.
With that in mind I arranged to meet Matt one evening for hopefully some decent dry fly sport.
The day in question was the same as every other day for the past couple of weeks with a completely clear blue sky and the sun beaming down. The only difference was that the wind was light and had moved to a more southerly direction.
I arrived about 5.30pm and was pleased to see only half a dozen cars in the car park. I set up a 5 weight outfit with a floating line. The leader comprised of 3 ft of 10lb maxima knotted to 3ft of 6lb maxima. To this was attached 4ft of 5lb fluorocarbon to a dropper and then another 8ft of 5lb fluorocarbon. I don’t like knotless leaders as I find they curl too much. I find the knotted taper helps straighten the leader and lies straight. The maxima was treated with mucilin and the flouro was degreased with fullers earth. On the dropper was a size 14 black shipmans, and on the point a size 14 black hopper, both lightly ginked.
Mat had not yet arrived, so I had a quick few casts at the far end of two meadows. There were no fish rising but the breeze was pushing this way and I was hopeful of picking something up, but that didn’t work out. When Matt arrived, we decided to walk down to Stocky bay which proved a good decision.
Arriving there we were greeted with the sight of one or two fish making splashy rises. The breeze was only very gentle here and for 15 yards was flat calm. There were a few greyish coloured buzzers about too.
Second cast was only short, to the edge of the ripple and after only a couple of seconds a fish rose confidently to the hopper on the point. As is usual with the Siblyback fish strong runs followed and after a couple of minutes a 1 ¾ lb Rainbow was in the net. The fish shot off when released.
A few minutes later Matt was into a fish. He was fishing with a slightly larger hopper with some CDC incorporated into the fly. Matt wanted a couple of fish for tomorrows BBQ so after dispatching the fish, we spooned it to find it had been feeding on small black buzzers.
The fish seemed to come along in groups of two or three, moving slowly upwind and methodically rising. Sometimes you could see a fish rise 3 or 4 times in an upwind line in the space of a couple of yards. That was how my next fish came. An easy 10 yard cast just upwind having seen the fish rise twice. It took the shipmans on the dropper immediately after landing. A small brownie was next.
Matt caught 3 or 4 more fish over the next hour or so. He took another which we spooned to find its stomach full of cased caddis larvae. The cases made of sand particles. I was a bit disappointed to find this as I was hoping to find emerging or adult buzzers! I had the same in the Snowbee competition where I caught my last fish on a dry fly, yet it had a stomach full of cased caddis.
The next half hour was frustrating for me. At one point I missed 3 takes in less than a minute. The fish were rising differently now, and they were boiling just under the surface, or their dorsal just breaking the surface. I noticed the fish shying away from my surface flies. I could clearly see the fly and a boil just under it, or a slight movement next to it. They were still taking Matts though! I tried a shuttlecock emerger thinking that they may have switched on to emergers or possibly the pupa unable to break through the calm surface. This didn’t work for me.
Despite promising myself I would only fish dries, I couldn’t resist seeing if I could catch one of these fish on a just subsurface buzzer. So, I kept the same leader and put a size 14 black muskins on the dropper and a light size 14 black buzzer on the point.
The sun was setting and the greased up maxima was gleaming like a beacon on the surface. I had just straightened the leader and not moved the flies at all when the leader confidently started disappearing. I tightened and was straight into another fish.
I packed up after that and watched and photographed Matt catching a couple more fish on the hopper. Matt told me that the last two or three fish had come when his hopper was just sunk which points towards the fish taking emergers or buzzers just under the surface.
On the walk back to the car we saw fish rising in great numbers, sometimes only a few feet from the bank.
This was now a couple of days ago and I understand some hawthorn flies have started to drop on the water and some good catches have been made already with dry hawthorns.
