A good start!
After many years flyfishing, the first fishing day on your favourite streams for the new season still feels like the arrival of Christmas Day. With slightly trembling hands, the rod is put together, and the reel is fitted. The leader and tippet are knotted and the fly tied on. Then the fly is snipped off again, because you forgot to thread the line through all the runners first!
That’s the kind of distracted anticipation I am talking about. How will this new season be ‘unboxed’? Will it be everything we hoped for after some leaner years? And what set-up to fish? So many questions!
After a decently wet winter, I had been monitoring the river levels on the BOM site closely. Levels looked high but fishable. Early reports and YouTube videos from north-east Victoria in September confirmed what the data showed. High but fishable water. Excellent.
After driving into Bright, I did not want to drive, hike or cycle any further. The Ovens River at the back gate had to do. Did I mention I was keen to get started? So, I was pleasantly surprised that the river greeted me with calmness and clarity. I could see through to the rocky bottom, and the flows were high but very fishable. I would say, with my long legs, even easily wadable! And straight away I spotted a little trout in the first run, weaving left and right in the current. What a great sign!
There's a trout in that picture...
Then came the perpetual analysis/ paralysis that comes with choosing the best set-up. Will it be the dry-dropper? Will it be the double nymph? I personally find it too cumbersome walking and carrying two rods to cover both options. It takes me out of my fishing flow. The weaving little trout confirmed that my starting set up ought to be the double nymph. But who really knows?!
I began carefully fishing a favourite ‘benchmark’ pool. You know the one, where you’re aware that no fish will make for a tough day and, equally, a good catch predicts a happy day! So, I was very pleased to hook and land a dirty half-dozen. Most were smaller fish, which was a great indicator that healthy populations are returning, with some decent fish too. Rainbows and browns. It looked like it would be a happy day.
As predicted by the benchmark pool test, it proved to be a good day.
Moving through the runs, the results were repeated over and over again. At one point, the levels allowed me to fish a dry-dropper Czech system. Here I fished one dry fly – the Czechs call her a ‘Rocking lady’: Rockerka – with a 2mm tungsten Perdigon Falanjista, an old favourite of the Spaniards (and mine too these days) two feet below. Fishing that system on a direct line (Czech), I could more precisely feel the take. Sometimes the dry did not even move, but I could detect the take in the line I held between my fingers. And on a few occasions, the Rockerka would be smashed by a feisty 'bow. Bonus!
The Rockerka and Falanjista.
I spent some time much further upstream, but the scenery and solitude there were inversely proportional to the fishing. In other words, it was bad. Empty. Zilch. Nada. Nichts. Niente! Just like the adage that the best fish often hangs out under the bridge in town, so too did better fishing appear lower in the system near easier access points along the road. The message here is that you still have to be prepared to move around if results disappoint in one spot.
Rockerka rainbow.
Now one thing I did notice was the large number of kids with spinning rods in Bright. I was alerted to the ‘FishTok’ phenomenon. Yes, that is a thing now. I saw plenty of young kids with spinning rods in one hand and an iPhone in the other, on the river’s edge. I was asked recently what I thought of the free fishing rod program. Apart from the mental and physical benefits fishing can bring - an undeniable social plus - I had some misgivings. ‘Why?’ I was asked. Well, too much competition on the water, obviously! So just like I have to check if my favourite coffee and croissant place in Melbourne CBD has not been crowded out by TikTokkers, we now have to monitor FishTok to check the crowds on our favourite rivers. Ugh. Some say inventing social media was a big mistake, and I now tend to agree!
Flows are presently very good. Here's hoping they stay that way.
Luckily, moving away from the crowds only requires some waders and a sense of adventure. The fish numbers look really healthy for the start of the season. So let’s hope we keep getting some regular rain to top-up the levels, and we are in for a great season ahead. Tight lines, with whatever set-up you use.
