Happy new year friends, this is my first blog of 2021. It's been a great holiday period down here in the South. Mostly great family time, with a healthy dose of time on the water - usually short but regular sessions. I've been fishing about an even mix of rivers and stillwaters myself, and with family & friends. We also had our “annual 100 year flood” as my friend Ronan likes to put it!!
The lakes have been fishing well, and I have spent a fair bit of time on Lake Dunstan. The lake seems to fish better when it's full, and also has a daily fluctuation thanks to the power control at the Clyde dam. This adds another (not so good) dimension to the mix, and certainly if you have the conditions the mornings (high tide) is the time to go.
With the water level up over the weed beds, this pushed the fish in towards the shore and they fed hard in amongst and on top of the weed beds. They were mostly feeding on damsels, although had a selection of beetles, grubs, snails, and damsels in them. The fishing, while good, was not very easy! Typically the trout had their heads down searching for snails and damsels, and their tails out of the water - tailing trout as we call them. It can be extremely frustrating fishing when cast after cast to very visible fish results in no hook ups. The fish simply just haven't seen the flies! The best method I normally use is to pick their direction and then land the fly right on their snout & strip right away. A fast accurate shot helps a lot here. The combination of the plop, and movement is usually enough to catch their attention. That's half the battle won. 6 inches away and the trout never even knew your fly was there. An ambush approach with a dry/ dropper could work, if you are confident in their direction - but the trout I encountered were extremely erratic zig zagging across the weeds with no apparent pattern. And if they indeed had a beat, I certainly wasn’t sitting there for 10 minutes to work it out!! Interestingly, Ronan tells me that in Tasmania the ‘tailing trout’ in the great western lakes are similar, yet if you throw a dry at them, like a gum beetle, they come up for them. Cool. It was great to see many folks out on the lake both fishing and enjoying the water, after a terrible year last year, all round.
I'm just back from a solo mission in Southland for a couple of days. The rivers are on the mend after the flooding, and there were some great trout around, despite some bad luck both days on the river. Thanks for the stay at the cottage Mike/ Simon, my first time down there.. I'll be back!
If you are local and fancy a trip then please fire me a message or email me directly thomas.j.mcauliffe@gmail.com and we can lock it in! Spaces available and the rest of the season looks to hold some great fishing. Now is the time to take advantage of it! .
Cheers, Tom
