Salmon on the Fly 2015.

  

       

Knowing that the water was going to be off i decided to try an evening session on the fly at the Dam fishery, starting at beat 1 i noticed that the water clarity was low maybe only two feet or even less and the flow was   very slow around the salmon lies. I spent much of my time retrieving line in a slow strip just to add speed to the fly otherwise there would be little or no movement in the fly as it fished through the pool. I was constantly having to bring the shooting head inside the top eye of the rod and this didn't make re-casting easy but the end justifies the means as i hooked into a nice fresh sea liced salmon on that slow strip causing the salmon to take the loop out of my hand and head off down river in a near perfect take allowing me time to lift into the fish as it was heading away from me. After the salmon felt pressure it then headed upstream towards the dam and there i was able to control the fish with ease and beach it in shallow water, i noticed that the fly had been well taken down by the fish and in fact it was completely swallowed, having difficulty retrieving the fly i quickly despatched the fish knowing that it would never have survived  being returned back to the river. The salmon was about 10lbs covered in sea lice and a hatchery fish. Seeing another salmon head and tail i noticed that it was lying in shallow water only two feet deep so i changed over to a tapered leader to avoid getting caught up in the bottom and also to allow the fly to fish more freely.

When fishing shallow or slow water i use tapered leaders for better turnover of the fly but there is also another benefit, if you want to stay higher up in the water column use a mono tapered leader but if you need a bit of depth a flurocarbon tapered leader can be used either way both tapered leaders will give more movement to the fly and that's important in slow water. Having a longer tail on a small fly dressed very lightly will always give plenty of movement and this in conjunction with the tapered leader and slow retrieve can induce a take from fresh salmon. The second fish hit hard and fast and threw a number of times before i could gain control of the fish but as has happened a lot recently some anglers bear down on me to either view the fish or get a sneak view of my fly and this moves the salmon out causing me to stop filming and having to tell them to move back away from the fish . I landed the fish in the shallows and after a few minutes of resting up the fish released it back into the river.  When i'm fishing i never run up on another angler playing a salmon or even come within casting range of them but for some reason these days a lot of people feel the need to walk right up to where your trying to land a fish and this is bad bank etiquette putting pressure on the angler and fish. I must definitely do a post on proper bank etiquette  because this might help young anglers understand proper bank manners but in saying that most of the people encroaching on me recently  and getting in the way of me making videos are middle aged and should know better.