Cicada Nirvana

I was fortunate to be introduced to a special river by my great friend Jay some 15 years ago, and it immediately occupied a place in my heart that has only grown with time. The fishing certainly can be spectacular. Cicada fuelled, surface crashing bass from mid-morning till dark. Fishing that is equally matched by the unique nature of the river — white sand banks, deeply tannin-stained water fringed by old growth eucalypt forest with an understorey of ferns, banksia scrub and ageless grass trees. Elevating the experience of spending time in this environment, the countless trips since that first one have added a layer of nostalgia for me, that has become inseparable from the fishing.

My yearly pilgrimage to fish that dark water feels like returning home to visit an old friend. Something that I am vividly reminded of when I hear the first cicadas around home in October, a reminder that only grows louder as the cacophony slowly marches towards a crescendo in the peak of summer, sometime after Christmas.

In those early days before the fly rod had entered my life, we spent our afternoons casting lures that surprisingly didn’t represent cicadas at all. Lots of walk-the-dog style lures, poppers and bent minnows were the usual mix. The similarity between them all, was that they were typically black, or at least very dark olive or brown.

We had plenty of success fishing this way. My guess is that, with the fish already looking up, thanks to the volume overhead, the action of these lures was enough to elicit a reactionary bite anyway, and on we went catching more than enough bass to keep us coming back year after year.

In the time since picking up a fly rod, it was always surprising to me — given the success I was used to when fishing this river — how challenging it often was to raise more than a handful of bites on a fly. The cicadas were the same, the river was the same, but something about the flies we were throwing — Poppers, Gurglers and Dahlberg Divers — just wasn’t drawing the attention that logic suggested they should.

OBSERVATION & ACTION

Over the years we have picked up a handful of cicadas off the water. They have typically been from the Psaltoda genus — the Black Prince and Yellowbelly being the most common. These cicadas aren’t large, around an inch long usually, sporting a brown to golden yellow underside and a black topside marked with brown. I never stopped to pay much attention beyond the colour in those early lure days — perhaps this would have sped up the process with the fly rod!

It’s funny the impact that using a fly rod has on the rest of your fishing. I have found it slows me down, slows my thoughts down and comfortably ensures that I am paying complete attention to everything that is going on around me — including when I find cicadas on the water.

In January, while fishing a Border Ranges creek on foot, the bass just were not on the job — whatever their lack of motivation, it was known only to them. As I sat on a rock with my legs in the creek, soaking up the country, one of those cicadas did hit the water in front of me, and this time I paid attention. The first thing I noted was the wings. Contrary to tucked up and streamlined along its back, they sat out perpendicular to the body once they hit the water — to aid in buoyancy no doubt. It didn’t move a great deal, but the ripples that reverberated from its vibrating wings certainly did. There isn’t a fish within cooee of a downed cicada that will miss that presence!

The last thing I noted was in the hand, when looking from the underside (or topside for that matter). There is very little to the profile of the insect — an almost rectangular body with a blunt taper to a small point at the tail — with the legs playing little to no part in the profile.

With all these key features in mind, I had plenty to ponder as I walked back through the hills. By the time I arrived at the ute, I had the fly I needed to tie in mind. It would of course be tied with deer hair, be as simple a fly as the material allows, and carry perpendicular wings of fox tail to match the real thing. After an hour at the vice I had put together the first downed cicada, and I knew straight away that it was a far closer representation of an actual cicada in the water than any of the other small black poppers and Dahlbergs I had fished as cicadas until that point. I also knew where I needed to test its worth.

PUT TO THE TEST

By late January, I made the trip to ‘Cicada Nirvana’ with Brandan in tow. We hit the water shortly after 11am with a boat full of fly rods, refreshments, and anticipation. Brandan had a small black Dahlberg tied on, and I was fishing my downed cicada imitation. We both had a shrimp rigged up on separate rods in case our hoped success on topwater didn’t eventuate.

We needn’t have worried, within the first 50 metres of bank that we prospected, the fish made themselves known. I had cast the little bug up tight to some lily pads on a steep edge, perhaps my fifth cast of the day. As the fly was sitting stationary in the water, while I was talking with Brando about something, we heard the splash, saw the fly vanish and then reappear again on the surface — it works! Now just to make one stick.

Within minutes the next bite came. A cast to a small branch laying bankside, and partway through the slow, shaking retrieve I saw the boil arrive behind the fly. A short pause, then a few tiny ticks of the fly-line to make those fox wings vibrate, and the fish returned with conviction. This time the line came tight, and the first fish had fallen to the downed cicada.

This episode was repeated shortly after, however, rather than another tea-stained bass arriving at the net, a neat little estuary perch surfaced instead. By midday this new fly had coerced as much attention as I was used to getting in a whole afternoon when fishing the same water with other flies. I suspect that without the reaction bite-drawing capabilities of a lure, the flies I had fished in the past allowed the fish just too much opportunity to scrutinise the offering and determine it wasn’t the real thing.

We worked slowly upriver over the following hours, picking apart every large snag and making sure not to miss any small sticks, or junctions where lily pads and reeds met. We picked off our fair share of fish, a great mix of bass and EP’s, and between Brandan and I, a similar tally of fish to the boat. Despite the similar number of fish landed, the cicada fly was eaten at least twice as many times when compared to the small black Dahlberg or popper — the hook had just failed to find its mark!

WORK TO DO

Driving home with smiles on our faces after a very enjoyable day of topwater fishing, I just couldn’t come to terms with the hook-up rate. Often topwater fishing is synonymous with missed bites, but there were just too many that day. After sending a few of these flies out to some other great fishers and trusted friends and receiving similar feedback — lots of bites, less hook-ups — I knew there was work to do.

Due to the nature of life, it would be another year before I had the chance to get back into that special creek, so I had plenty of time to mull over the whys and why nots of the fly that was so successful at raising fish, but not so successful at hooking them.

Hook exposure was unlikely to be the issue, with almost all the gape on the Gamakatsu B10s available beneath the fly. It’s level attitude in the water was a possibility, however, one I was unwilling to compromise significantly, given that I intentionally took the keel weight out of this fly to ensure it sat level in the water like a real cicada. With those two most likely possibilities considered, it felt like a second, or stinger hook was the next logical step.

ROUND TWO

Next December, I hit the vice again to bring some of these flies to life with an array of stinger hook set-ups, knowing I would get the opportunity shortly to go and test them somewhere that they’d encounter an honest appraisal. Three new flies rolled off the vice, one with a small treble hook hanging off some articulation wire a short distance behind the fly, and two that had metal jig assist hooks retro fitted to the main hook in different lengths. I figured these configurations shouldn’t impact the fly’s demeanour in the water too significantly. They would allow it to lay close to level, however, each in their own way provided extra sticking points for the fish to find as they engulfed that imitation cicada.

This time Tom joined me for the run, and we repeated the session that Brandan and I had the year before, hitting the water shortly after 11am to fish through until we ran out of light. Just like last time, we were into the action within minutes, and on the first bend of the river that we covered, half a dozen bass made their way to the boat, and only one miss!

Pleasingly, half these fish were hooked only on the stinger hook, be it the treble or the shorter assist hook set-up. We made our way upriver in the usual fashion for this system, picking up 2 or 3 fish in a short section and then working for another few hundred metres before the next run of bites, all the while hooking far more fish than we dropped — in stark contrast to the previous summer.

All was well until the tide bottomed out, and as they say, no run no fun. This old adage certainly rings true for tidal dwelling bass, it’s just unfortunate when this lack of run coincides with that golden hour as the sun slips below the eucalypts. As the shadows really grew long, the tide began to filter back in again and along with it the action, however, Tom was the only one to land a fish from this last flurry of slurps and crashes. It seems stinger hook or not, they just miss topwater flies more often than I would like!

We finished up the evening, fishing side by side with Jay (yes, the same person who introduced me to this special place all those years ago) and his father, sharing plenty of laughs and well-timed barbs at each other’s inability to keep a hook in a fish. But by this point no one really cared. We’d enjoyed another spectacular day in this stunning river and been kept busy throughout by plenty of hungry fish smashing our topwater flies. The perfect trip home to visit that old friend.