A cracking day to end the season for the club outings. And we missed the foul weather by a day as well, which was a welcome bonus. We had a calm start with cloud cover, which dissolved away as the breeze got up from the west to give a bright day with a light-moderate breeze. Temp was as good as we’ve had in the past week or so, and distinctly better than it was mid-week.
I fished with Steve Kilkpatrick and, being a calm start, we both went with dries. We went in search of risers and found some in International Bay and along the reed bed. But they were both very oncey and very hard to get a look from. After a good couple of hours of trying, we had nothing to show for it.
We gave up and decided to go up to the Plantation and work down the Heronry to Sandy Bay. However, on the way up through the gap, we were suddenly spooking fish, both sides of us. I cut the motor and moved to one side so we were not drifting back through the spooked fish. The breeze was just starting, which gave us a drift down towards the end of Arnmach. Steve moved a fish, and then I had a fresh-air shot to my black parachute hopper. Further down the drift I finally had a nice slow take to the hopper and lifted solidly into the fish, which took off like a scalded cat. I was just getting it under control when it just fell off! Then Steve caught the first of the day – by pulling his dries across the top – a fish latched on to his deer-hair sedge pattern. After another period of nothing, and it getting breezier and brighter, we decided dries were not the thing to be on and we both put up washing liney rigs. Steve went full floater, while I went 5 ft tip.
Another period of very little followed, and we had a look elsewhere. We tried in at the Plantation, but that seemed dead. Then we tried across at the north side of the Malling Shore. There were several boats there, making it look like something was going on. If it was, we didn’t see any evidence. We decided to go back to the Gap. By this time my adrenaline levels were through the floor and I was sitting, figure-of-eighting in a state of semi-sleep. What woke me was the sudden “yank-ping” of a large fish doing a grab-and-turn on my bob fly at the end of the retrieve… with my rod pointing down the line! Away with the whole cast of 3. Although I was on fine 0.183 mm fluoro, I think I could have been on 6 lb Maxima and it would still have broken me!
I rerigged with the same flies – a black popper-hopper on the bob, a cormorant in the middle and a small black booby on the tail. It didn’t take long to get a grip of one on the cormorant and get the grannie off. We decided to keep repeating the drift through the Gap as long as we were getting action. The next couple of drifts provided us with a further fish a-piece, Steve’s to a Kate Mclaren hopper type fly on the bob and mine to the booby. We had quite a few missed chances and a couple of on-offs as well. I was getting most of the action to the popper-hopper without ever landing a fish on it. By now I was just pulling the flies on the 5 ft tip, so everything was coming back on the top of the water, and it was good fun seeing the fish locking-on and following the flies. Finally I got one to follow then take a solid hold. Unknown to me at the time was that it was a two’s up… on the same 0.183 mm fluoro! Everything we were encountering was in the same 3 to 4 lb class, and the pair I had on were no different. They sounded under the boat and simply did not move. I was starting to wonder if my line had gone round the outboard. I was also wondering if the fish had been grabbed by a big pike. It was totally amazing the fluoro was holding on to two of those lumps. Hooking 2 large fish on fluoro nearly always means one quickly breaks off. The first I knew of it being two was when I was netting the one on the bob. I was about to lift the net when it got pulled down the fish got pulled out of it! At that point the top dropper finally broke off and that was when we realised there was a second fish on the booby on the tail. My arm was hanging off by now, so Steve gave me a hand by picking up the second net and going to net the one on the tail… and just as he was netting it, it fell off! What a carry-on! Steve decided the whole incident was worth a score of one, which was fine by me.
We were actually still getting action on the Gap drift when we decided to give it the last hour of the day back at International Bay. That was a bad call, because we did nothing after we came away from the Gap.
The club’s 10 rods landed 37 fish.
Afterwards, we went up to Poppies in Calendar for our usual meal, which again was superb, and a few jars for those staying the night… and much blethering of nonsense.
