Short Sessions

People have said that meetings are the black hole of our society, as time can simply disappear into nothingness. A medical friend told me that in hospital meetings they used to play management bingo just to stay awake, by identifying key jargon that managers love to throw around. I took to drawing up ideas for flies and making lists of materials that I wanted to order, just to get through the ordeal.

Online meetings have the distinct advantage that you can turn off your computer video camera and tie a fly or two. This is especially useful at those times when you find yourself grovelling around on the carpet searching for that precious tungsten bead you just dropped or, even more so, when you didn’t have time to remove your waders from that early morning session. My friend Craig avoids pressing the ‘leave meeting’ button because, he says, that’s tantamount to advertising that he is fed up and gone. Instead, he quietly switches off the audio and video and then saunters off, disappearing into another black hole — invariably he has a more important meeting to attend.

STREAMSIDE MEETINGS

We often arrange meetings at lunchtime on our local river during summer and early autumn, when likely attendees congregate in the fast riffle water over drop-offs. Work clothes off, waders on and a brisk walk to the meeting location. As in any normal meeting, we take turns to present. Generally, we don’t have to wait long as silver bullets volunteer their time and come to our nets in short order, for half an hour or so before we head back to work.

Short sessions are all about targeting productive water and focusing on the most appropriate technique. We are fortunate in having a river flowing through Palmerston North, here in New Zealand, and despite our big-city friends joking about us living in a backwater, we can be fishing in minutes rather than hours. Later, when we stroll back into work, hair combed and shirts straightened, our colleagues are none the wiser.

A half hour lunchtime meeting frequently sees five or six fish on the agenda, though we are not immune to blank sessions at times. Should there be more items than anticipated under ‘any other business’ we might extend the meeting to an hour or so and double our productivity. But, the key to any successful outcome is precise location.

PRECISE LOCATION

There is a distinct pattern of trout movement through the year. Understanding these seasonal movements undoubtedly helps us to capitalise on opportunities as they arise. In the autumn, fish move steadily upstream to their winter spawning grounds, with the browns heading off a few months before the rainbows. During spring and summer, they drop back downstream again. Around February, a mass of juvenile rainbows, or ‘dinks’ as we affectionately call them, are spreading throughout the river system, finding their way into town during March and April. By this time, they weigh a few ounces. Fast forward to the following summer at a year-and-a-half old, they’re as fat as butter and weigh a pound or so.

There is also a noticeable pattern of fish movement on a micro level, that extends to fine tuning the location of their respective positions in pools and runs according to temperature and water level. In October, when the bigger fish are beginning to arrive back in the middle reaches, they are usually in the lower two thirds of pools and a cast into the fast water at the head of a pool is often fruitless. However, by Christmas the top half of pools offer the most productive water, and by late January they are packed in the top quarter.

High temperatures and low water levels push fish into the bubbly oxygenated water, with the prime honey holes being the drop-offs from a riffle into a pool where the water is about waist deep. A brief study of satellite maps should reveal potential locations to try. I noticed that by studying the hot spots on a topographic map, a common denominator is the presence of shingle seams — the geology and gradient are such that ideal pools and runs form frequently in these areas.

The finer points of precise location occurred to me some years ago, during a session fishing the middle of a pool where my son Johnny had done well the week before. After just one fish, I was at the point of heading off to another spot but cast into the head of the pool just in case. What I hadn’t anticipated was that the fish were stacked up like ninepins in the top 20 to 30 metres and I netted a couple of dozen hard fighters in a few hours.

Lunchtime meetings evolved out of this experience, as it became clear that the fish are more concentrated during high summer, with ninety-nine percent of them being found in one percent of the water. The trick is to find the one percent and focus solely on that.

VERSATILE APPROACH

We have spent many years using a range of methods that have formed the ‘R & D’ behind our short sessions. The rivers we fish vary considerably and adopting a versatile approach catches us good numbers. When time is limited, it is extremely useful to carry a couple of rods rigged up for different methods and situations if regulations allow. These might include rods set up for Euro nymphing, dry or indicator with nymph, and wet fly or streamer. Our local rivers are not overly conducive to dry fly, but I know plenty that are. The time swallowed up re-rigging a rod can steal a significant percentage of a short session.

The agenda for a successful meeting is to work the likely area systematically. View the river like an athletics track with lanes, and work each lane carefully before casting into the next one. Gradually work your way across the river, then upstream. As soon as a fish is hooked, walk downstream and pull it away from its colleagues so that the spot is disturbed as little as possible.

NYMPHING TECHNIQUES

Dead-drift nymphing in various forms is generally the most productive approach. As the water is frequently quite lively where the fish are stationed in warm weather, it’s possible to wade closer to them. Euro nymphing with the bicolour indicator or sighter held almost vertically above the surface is highly effective and minimises drag, as the leader is not sitting across different current seams. Yarn indicator or dry with nymph is also effective, especially when fished on a shorter line with minimal leader on the surface.

Heavier flies get down quickly and help make drifts more accurate, while rapid-fire casting keeps the flies in the zone as much as possible. For most work, I find a 3.5mm tungsten bead is the go-to size for the point fly with a 3mm on the dropper. Generally, tippet length of four to five feet with a dropper tied-in eighteen inches from the point is ideal.

Regardless of nymphing method, fluorocarbon tippet ranging from 0.14 to 0.18mm will sort out most fish. In short sessions, I go straight to 0.18mm as the time available to play fish is limited and a three pounder could quickly clean you up if there are sunken trees nearby. Drifts range from three seconds to about eight seconds depending on flow, depth, and whether the flies are allowed to lift at the end of the drift. Usually, they prefer the dead drift, but sometimes they hit the lift at the end.

For flies, I tie on size 14 or 16 barbless hooks with a range of tungsten beads from 2.5 to 4.0mm. Regarding colour, I mainly use copper, silver and metallic light-pink and find them all productive. Other useful colours include fluoro orange, gold, black, and brown. I have rarely met two anglers who tie their flies the same, and everyone has their personal favourites. Over the years I have fine-tuned the flies I use to a few patterns that are quick to tie without fussing about perfection. Probably the most important thing is that you are confident in them.

The photos show some personal favourites, but I would encourage experimentation. Ice dubbing materials are easy to work with, highly effective, and brown, black or olive with a hotspot tag or collar are hard to beat. It may be necessary to change the colour of your flies in the latter stages of a meeting, just to minimise spooking fish that have observed their friends disappearing after a snack.

In an upstream breeze, a vertical Euro sighter gets blown around, making bite detection difficult, so floating the sighter can be deadly on smoother runs and glides. Apply mucilin to the sighter and surprisingly, it will float as long as heavy flies don’t drag it down too quickly. Flies must be light — up to a 3mm tungsten bead works fine — and drifts must be brief. Laying the line out straight on the cast results in a super sensitive system and even a quick bite will cause the sighter to dart forward.

In a moderate upstream wind, I use an orange poly-yarn indicator. This may be tied on a dropper or tubing that slides on the leader. I recall fishing this tactic in an upstream gale where the gusts of wind blew the tops off the waves into a spray, but the yarn indicator sailed up on the cast, rode the current down and showed up plenty of bites and fish. Should you encounter a strong downstream wind, a shift to wet-lining may be the only option, unless of course there’s a local café to visit. In desperate times, you could even go back to work.

STREAMERS

As the season wears on and water temperatures cool, the fish drop back slightly in the pools. Deeper areas can be approached with a streamer fly on a floating or sinking line. Small to medium size Woolly Buggers in black, olive or brown, made with ice dubbing will happily do the damage, especially with a Spider, small nymph, or San Juan Worm tied a foot off the back.

A deadly variation for cross-current control is to place a couple of AAA split shot a foot above the streamer. The rig is cast square across stream and as it swings round, pull the rod back towards you to lift the fly, followed by a thrust forward. The shot and flies instantly drop down in the water column, and as the line tightens up again the flies swing up and across. Repeat three or four times per drift. Bites tend to come as the fly starts lifting. Heavier tippet of 0.20mm or more is necessary to avoid break-offs on savage takes.

FINE TUNING

The month or so that the juvenile dinks are in town en masse is a superb time to practise techniques and fine tune laying out the line, drift control and striking, as these small fish are lightning quick on the bite. They can suck in a fly and spit it back out quicker than you can blink. The best methods by far are Euro-style dead-drift nymphing with a floating sighter, and wet fly with a floating line and a twelve-foot tippet with a team of three Spiders, such as Partridge & Orange, swung across and down with staccato two-inch strips.

The Spiders are tied on size 16 barbless hooks on droppers and are weightless, except the point fly which is best tied with a 2 to 2.5mm tungsten bead to keep the flies high in the water. Shallow riffles and tailout glides offer the most productive fishing with plenty of youngsters looking for candy. It’s not unusual to catch a dozen or two in a short space of time, with frequent double hook-ups on the cards.

Not all our sessions are short. Over the years, we have headed off on many a Friday evening for a weekend’s fishing, up to five hours drive away. A colleague suggested a useful trick to magically disappear from work a little earlier on a Friday afternoon. Just before ducking out, he says, make sure your desk is set up with plenty of important looking papers scattered around for effect. Briskly breeze in and out of the office several times with a clipboard as though you are terribly busy. Then, simply evaporate, out and away. Your colleague in arms will put your laptop away for you when they leave, and should anyone happen to ask where you are, will simply reply with a vague sort of shrug: ‘I think he’s in a meeting.’