Dan showed up at 0515, he was 15 minutes early. This was not like him but I did give him a warning not to be late this time. I had places to be that afternoon. We put in at Rabbit Bridge about 0630. The sun would not come over the Galatea Hills for another half hour or so. I put on a bead head olive and black bugger for the float down to the flats. The first fish was in the net within minutes. It was a good start...
Look, I just got home and I am writing about the day. It was silly. Yes, we had slow times but it was pretty silly. I had a list of wee wet flies to tick off and a bunch of dries. My first was on a March Brown soft hackle wee wet. Next thing you know, we had a double header as Dan hooked up with an olive marabou damsel nymph . We floated down the lake and every thing worked. Then we went to more wee wet flies and caught more fish. Dan's next three were on a dad's favourite wee wet, a bead head zug bug nymph then a zug bug nymph. Zug bugs imitate a damsel nymph pretty well.
We just floated down and took turns casting. We got about half way down the lake and started targeting sighted fish. This was along spring-creek-fed channels along the edge of the lake. The sun was ok at times but we scared heaps away. The easterly wind was getting annoying too. But the sighted fish we cast to were more than happy to play. The only hard part was landing them with all of the weed around/ Dan was seriously challenged with long, delicate casting to sighted fish. That and he forgot his polarised sun glasses. He managed to land some beauties though. One was on a bead head krystal olive bugger.
This was definitely in the too hard basket for Dan so I put on a big deer hair cicada for him to slap around. It worked alright. I started using a dry/dropper combo but the dropper was a wee wet, matching the dry. I think the first one I used was a red tipped governor dry fly with a red tipped governor wee wet below. Boy howdy did it work! A lot of the takes were on the wee wet dropper. Then I put one on for Dan and it worked a treat. The dries worked too. Dan got a beauty on a Fishing Spider.
It certainly slows you down when you change flies every time you catch a fish. My next combo was a Greenwell's glory dry with a Greenwell's glory wee wet below. It worked too.
Yeah so we caught fish on 24 different patterns today. I only know because each time I took one out of a mouth, I put it in a separate container to count later. There may have been more. This fishery is full of fish. It is not stocked. It is not easy to catch them. What I can tell you is that you should go there and try. It is a world-class fishery that so many overlook. There was one other kayak fisherman in the area. We did not see him land any fish. I am pretty sure he caught a few.
We paddled back up to the bridge around 1:30. I had just caught one on a Parachute Black Gnat. Dan put on a damsel dry fly and caught one of the best browns of the day in the middle of the river by the boat ramp below the bridge. A couple of kids saw it happen and they looked amazed. One of them will buy a canoe one day.
We would still be fishing now but we had to call it quits (I did). I had to be somewhere later and I had to cancel as I was buggered.
