Deadly stillwater tactics and secrets

[poppernel]

Grant and Chris, nice posts. One thing that I beleive in is not weighting my stillwater flies, but use appropriate lines to get my flies down, unweighted flies just seem to perform better. Dont get me wrong, now and again if need be, I'll use small beadhead flies on a floating line.

Just to add to Grants retreives etc, something I always do at the end of a retreive is the ''leisure lift'', having had plenty of trout hit it just before you lift your line for the next presentation.

Dave

[Wade]

This is some awsome information

Thanks especially to Grant and Chis.

I just wnat to take a moment to mention another retrieve that I have found to work nicely on a hard day when the fish follow your fly right to the side only to avoid it.

Dont give the fish to much time to observe the fly in a stationary position by retrieving in long pulls while shaling your retrieving hand around to add jerks to the flys motion as mentioned earlier in the thread, the difference is then while retrieving with your left hand (for right handed people) you lid the rod forward with your right. By the time your left arm is fully extended behind you at the end of the retrieve your right arm should be fully extended forwards. Now you take the line with you index finger (prefernace) of your right hand and you "retrieve" with the right hand by bringing it towards your body, while doing this you lightly shake the rod tip to impart yet more twitching to the fly. When your right hand nears your starting positon take hold of the line with your left hand and repeat. As you can see the result is that your retrieve is continuous.

I have also found this method to be very effective when targeting Bass

[Mike Taylor]

Jeez what a wonderful thread this is!!

I've sat and made notes ( 'cause I can never remember this stuff when I'm acatually on the water.)

With the stillwater season coming up, please could some of the more experienced guys continue with it. - Specifically about where to start looking for fish when you arrive at a new venue. (I'd normally head straight to the inlet but I'm sure that's not right)

I'm heading to Lakies in a couple of weeks time and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Gerhard]

Mike,

Read here

http://www.flytalk.co.za/forum/showt...ht=water+nymph

Korrie gave a lot of great info here

[Mike Taylor]

Ah thanks Gerhard

[poppernel]

Mike, put it this way. One arrives at a stillwater you have never ff before. If you dont meet locals the night before to share places and or tactics, all's not lost. Obviously one would have monitored the winds and pressures leading up to your trip. If not, still not a train smash.
Try to get onto the water at least 1hr30 before sunrise and even then take just a breeze into concideration. Fish that breeze. The bank that breeze is breezing onto is your best bet. Work this bank into the shallows and or inlet. Watch the water for rises, are they close to the bank, or deeper out. Often at this time, you can have fish all over the water, but does not last long.
FF the breeze bank floating line and a small beadhead, or even a unweighted GRHE etc./wooly worm or wooly bugger, (small). No luck, go big!!! Floating still, but get your BIG fly nearly onto the bank, let sink slowly and then vary your speeds of retreive untill you hook up. Depending on areas, count down your fly.

As it gets lighter and normally colder maybe switch to intermediate /sinking lines, count down, and vary retreives. Lighter means you can see see better, the fish as well. As the sun rises, move out of the shallows or inlet. Now start working drop-offs or the edges of weed beds.(dont hassle to much if your hook hooks some), just retreive and if you dont get a attack, just clean your fly and go again. ( hard work, but caught most big fish this way)

It is of utmost importance that during these times you are aquainted more or less to the different fish/food rises. Noticing hatches and fish activity outweigh all I've already said. Dry fly on stillwaters remains fantastic, so any insects on or above the water at this time is a indication as to how you will fish. If you miss out here, good as ''blanking''.

Dave

[gkieser]

Jeez what a wonderful thread this is!!

I've sat and made notes ( 'cause I can never remember this stuff when I'm acatually on the water.)

With the stillwater season coming up, please could some of the more experienced guys continue with it. - Specifically about where to start looking for fish when you arrive at a new venue. (I'd normally head straight to the inlet but I'm sure that's not right)

I'm heading to Lakies in a couple of weeks time and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Mike,

I am not sure if you have been to lakies before, but if not, when one gets there for the first time it is easy to go into panic mode before you've even touched the water. It's pretty large compared to most waters that most SA stillwater anglers are used to, and i remember trying to figure out where to start when i first got there.

I think the first thing you should do is to decide on a specific area of the dam and stick to that area for the day. This is the best way to learn a stillwater of this size. STick with that area and try to work out how the fish are working there. Once you have been there a few times you will have more experience in a few areas of the dam and you will get more and more confident in fishing those areas.

Just on structure and where to start. With a piece of water you have not ever seen before, the first thing to do would be to try and understand what the dam looks like underwater. Examine the slopes as they enter the water and the angle that they enter. This will allow you to visualise where the extended shallows should be (and therefore weedbeds, lots of food for fish), or where the deeper holes would be where the fish might also hold.

Another contour i like to fish are the points of bays, as you can visualise these points still extend under the water, and for some reason the fish love these shallow areas where it drops off into the bays on either side. A great example of this is the point at lakensvlei with the first pump house as you look up to the inlet. When you see the dam when it is low, this point stretches a very long way out into the dam (almost half way across the inlet bay), with steep drop offs on either side. This has always been a pretty good spot for me.

Here is a pic of Lakies from the hut in 2006. You can see what i mean about that point straight away:


Also straight in the centre of the picture is that shoal of rocks that is just off the launch site (The car in the pic is where the waters edge currently is these days). Look how shallow it is up till that point and on the other side of that is a huge drop off. If you fished up and down that drop off you are sure to get some good fishing, but early morning and evening you can have some great fishing on the shallow area between the launch site and the shoal.

Shoals in general are fish magnets! If you can find them, they can contribute to a great day of fishing around them. Lakies has a few of these in the main section of the dam (to the right of this pic), but when the dam is full they are very difficult to find.

Hope this helps - it would be great to get a report back from lakies - i have been itching to go up there again.

Cheers
G

[Mike Taylor]

Thanks Dave and Grant,

It's just so brilliant that you guys will sit and type out long descriptions and hints to help a novice. Thanks.

I'm collecting up notes and will sit later and make up a strategy. I like the idea of getting on the water long before light.

Grant, I have been to Lakies before but didn't fish it as it was full of juniors. I stood on the bank and watched the youngsters fish. When we got there the air temperature was 7 degrees. From there it started dropping. Then It started raining. By lunchtime the kids were shivering so badly they could hardly hold a coffee cup. Fortunately we had wetsuits in the bakkie and I insisted they put them on for the afternoon. The next day they fished in a snowstorm! At least they were fishing. I was standing on the stoep of the hut getting progressively hypothermic.

I'll take that pic with me to try to identify the drop-off off the beach

Thanks again guys.

[MattHaden88]

I'm new to fly talk but an avid stillwater fly Fisherman g
And I'm fortunate to live in a prime Trout area known as Kamberg. kambergtroutfestival.co.za and I must say this has been the best thread iv seen so far and learned so much. Snail in the grass shit that's just pure out the box thinking my gosh I'm still drop jawed great contributions here. I'll add my 2 cents asap

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