So between holidays, selling houses, looking for somewhere to live, packing and a seriously low river, I finally had a couple of hours window to get out and have a cast.
Managed to grab my gear and leave the phone and camera in the house. So arrived at the river armed with a 6wt trout rod a 6wt line and my chest pack.
Coupled up a NZ style nymph rig and managed to wrangle plenty beautiful brownies in the 8-12” range which made it feel good to be alive.
After a while I thought I might try a streamer in the coloured water to see what could be lurking.
So I shortened the leader and tied on a Swim Coach in yellow. This fly has the most amazing action when you fish it slowly, somewhere between a rapala and a Tasmanian devil, but with far more life. It’s just great fun to watch it swim and twitch the rod tip and make it dance. Anyway I was pissing about as you can see when the small flashes from the fly suddenly grew and became one great big flash. As I mindlessly lifted into it I realised what was happening…. The ensuing scrap was epic and culminated in a coloured but not fully tartan cock fish of 34” complete with kype and attitude. It didn’t hang around long and swam off strongly. Sod’s law that this happened when I had no photo gear with me but it was huge fun and probably wraps up my season unless I can sneak in a couple of days after the house move.
I seem to have far more success with salmon on streamers than I do with the big browns especially when I’m making them dance about
Sandy