Salmon on the Fly 2017.

   
          

When I arrived the water was at full load and just as I was putting up the spinning rod I could see that the water was losing speed and starting to slow down. I quickly changed and put up my switch fly rod and rather than using my normal 3.9 ins per second sink tip I put up the 2.6 instead because when the water drops off it normally takes the best part of an hour to pick up speed again and if you have the heavier tip on all that's going to happen is that you will spend a lot of time stuck on the bottom. Moving down the beat I was just using a slow figure of eight retrieve to keep the fly moving and straight away I hit the first fish, it was a nice fish of about eleven pound's and had definitely been in the system for awhile as it was slightly dark. The fish ran down river on the first run but quickly changed its mind and then came up against me and straight in around the big rock that's now in mid river. It wedged itself firmly in behind the rock and got stuck, I had to move down river and get a straight line on it and then I was able to get a small bit of control but only for a few seconds because as soon as the fish felt some slack it went back in around the rock again. This continued for about 10 minutes until I was able to wade out and tail the fish in mid stream, holding my rod around my neck and the fish in my left hand I tried to wade back to the bank but the fly line was still around the rock so I decided to release the fish mid stream to stop it from breaking the rod , line or even possibly me as it was really trashing about. There are now too many rocks in beat 1 and to add to that there are three croy's in a line less that 20 meters between the three. There are two big rocks in mid water where the salmon got stuck and in low water they are sticking out of the water like an island, there is going to be some fun when anglers try playing out fish there as it's now like a mine field.

The water started to pick up pace so I changed back to the heavier sink tip and just as I was about to start fishing I saw a couple of salmon head and tail further down beat 1. I quickly covered the lie and as I was moving into the zone the rod was practically pulled out of my hand so violent was the take. The salmon first headed down stream but again like the first fish it turned and headed straight for the big rock in mid water, this time I moved down stream and got a good angle on the fish and brought it back down river. I played the fish on my side and even then with the new croy's and rocks it was just a nightmare trying to land the fish. Finally I was able to move the fish in circles and then land it on the bank, it was a beautiful sea liced fresh salmon of about 13 lbs and this one was going home. To be honest I had set myself up for a long evening of hard spinning and as soon as the water dropped off I was really delighted to be fly fishing even if I hadn't caught any salmon just the fact that your fly fishing makes it more worthwhile.