By NEIL GROSE | As much as we all like to dream about shallow-water feeding trout, the reality is quite a different kettle of fish! Trout in the early months of the season, for the majority of the time at least, will be in water deeper than 2m.
More often than not, they will prefer to be 3m down, and deeper depending upon waters of course! So for the keen flyfisher, the answer isn’t so much blowing in the wind as hugging the weed!
The early season features cold water in the highlands, with most waters over 600 metres in elevation being around the 5°C mark. Often Arthurs and Great Lakes will be around 3°C!
As cold blooded creatures, trout metabolise in direct relation to the water temperature. The colder the water, the slower they digest food – the less they need to eat! It also means that their primary sources of food are down deep to escape the often extreme variations in temperature in the shallows.
The food that trout will seek out in the early months of the season are pretty standard fare — stick caddis, immature damsel fly nymphs, scud, blood worms, snails, galaxia and in some lakes, immature mayfly nymphs. The stick caddis that early season trout will encounter down deep aren’t the free swimming variety that we see during spring and summer.
Often the trout seek out what I refer to as horned caddis their case looks a lot like a cows horn, with the tip being quite dark. The tip of the horn is embedded in the bottom (usually in muddy type bottoms), with the top bit plus the caddis pupa that lives in the horn poking out the top feeding on what ever drifts by.
Trout, usually brown trout, tend to graze over the bottom, and sip these caddis up quite casually. The two other major foods are scud and snails.
In Arthurs Lake, for example, scud and snails are pretty much everywhere that weed is found around 3m deep and deeper.
These are slow moving beasts, and as a result trout move quite slowly in search of them.
So there are two options, match what is down there, or make your offering a little (or a lot) different. From where I sit, there are two real approaches to catching these deep feeding fish match the hatch and fish deep and slow, or take the fight up to the fish and attack!
Even though deep feeding fish are on the search for slow moving, drab coloured things, on the right day they will chase and hammer fast fished, brightly coloured flies. On the right day? Any day you can get out really!
Scuds, snails and shrimps
If the shrimp are tending towards spawning as they seem to do around September, then a bright orange hot spot in the middle of the fly is a good idea.
The good thing about fishing deep early in the season is the lack of complication.
Presentation of the fly is down deep, so all those dodgy casts that spook the fish in summer don’t matter here; as long as you can get the fly deep you are in with a shot at the big time.
Gear is simple. You need a method of getting the fly down deep relatively quickly. This either means heavy flies or heavy fly lines. If you are fishing deep and slow with imitative flies, it is often beneficial to have a heavier fly on a long leader, coupled to a floating line.
In some cases however, a non-weighted fly on a sinking line can be good as well; it will provide a natural presentation of the fly, especially if you are using small stick caddis and scud patterns over the top of weed beds.
If you are on the attack, then it is the domain of fast sinking lines as fast sinking as you can find them. In combination with weighted flies you have to strip fast just to keep them off the bottom, but this is the speed needed. Rods by necessity are fast action rods of between 6 and 8 weight. I prefer a fast action 10 footer for this, however a 9 footer is great as well.
Leaders are very business-like my recommendation is for 8 feet of 8lb fluorocarbon, 12 feet for 2 flies and 14 feet for 3 flies.
Tweak, twiddle, strip, whack! If there is one constant with fishing deep, irrespective of whether it is fast or slow, is the need to keep in 100% contact with the flies. As trout are feeding slowly and methodically at this time of year, the takes of the fly are correspondingly slow and subtle, with the exception of fast attack methods.
You must log in to post a comment.