Early Season Advice

[dleroux]

I know there's still a few weeks left before the Yellow Season will be in full steam, and with the cold winter I assume the water temp will only be ideal at the end of Sept.. Do you have any advice on some early season techniques?

[dizzy]

1 - find the fish
2 - find out what they eating
3 - catch the buggers :D

[Herman Jooste]

1 - find the fish
2 - find out what they eating
3 - catch the buggers :D

Hey Dizzy, you bin' fishin' with Scythe too long :p :D :D

More seriously my advice is search the forums, read the old threads, there are numerous pieces of advice for not only the beginning of the season, and lastly join us for the Vaal Trip 4!

[dizzy]

Hey Dizzy, you bin' fishin' with Scythe too long :p :D :D

Nee jong, daai bliksem is te suinig, hy vang mos alleen! :D:D:D:D

[Herman Jooste]

Nee jong, daai bliksem is te suinig, hy vang mos alleen! :D:D:D:D

En as hy nie aleen is nie dan vat hy sy "creature comforts" saam, dan mag niemand binne 10km kom nie.:eek:

[Nymph+O-]

Niemand mag 'kom' nie - wel behalwe hy.period!:p

[pieterkriel]

Take a lot of patience with on your trip, after hauling the 100th piece of old mans beard out of the Vaal you will need it

[dizzy]

Take a lot of patience with on your trip, after hauling the 100th piece of old mans beard out of the Vaal you will need it

Hehe, Pieter, it sounds like you speak from a past experience????

[pieterkriel]

Hehe, Pieter, it sounds like you speak from a past experience????

yeah, the only thing that stopped me from throwing my rod into the bushes was the knowledge that it should get better again eventually and then I will need the bloody rod

[Scythe]

Ja nee boet ... (every last one of you)

Ek's g'n fkken suinig nie ... ek charge net te veel :D

Dleroux, I don't know what your family waters look like there by Potch, but from your previous pictures I have seen a variety of water, rapids, riffles, glides and pools.

You should go take a look at http://yellowsonfly.blogspot.com , YellowFever is busy finishing the September report and will publish it soon, probably in the next day or so. Most of what I'm about to say you will find there in addition to a lot more.

Right now, you can go trudging through the rapids, but I wouldn't prefer to do that, just yet, there will be lots of time for that during the rest of the season.

You will find lots of fish in the pools can only really access with a boat, you will also find lots of fish hanging out in the throat belly of the pool behind rapids where your faster water starts bunching up and slowing down, this water should be fished well.

Mostly, this is still a good time to pick fish up on dry fly or dry and dropper, though you can also pick up some fish by swinging a team of nymphs, though your control fly would need to be reasonably heavy as the water you will be fishing will mostly be deeper than 1.5M

At the moment I'm still opting not to fish the rapids though there are some fish already moving into the rapids during the course of the day and as the hatch progresses. Mostly this entails lobbing a mayfly dry followed by a mayfly emerger to match what is hatching at that particular time. This ofcourse varies as only the Vaal can, from Olive to Cream to Brown to Black to Rust colours and it's best to have a fair selection of those colours. Sizes should be #14 - #18 but the smaller the better. I was really surprised to see adult MF on the water of close to #14 in size, this indicates the nymphs should be huge, at least #14, possibly #12 in extreme situations.

As for fly selection, spring brings about the start of the caddis hatches again and as amazing as it may seem, I counted 10 smallish caddis on the water this past Saturday, so it won't be long before we're inundated with hatches again. Rockworm and caddis variants should do the trick, as well as fishing the imago stage during a hatch.

There is also a fair amount of LargeMouth activity and you should still spend some time hunting them in the appropriate manner with buggers in Olive and Black in a variety of sizes.

Although the guys moan about the grass and weed, these things are like drive through fast food joints for fish. On and next to these you will find lots of nymphs, caddis, damsel fly and even snails. Work them well, especially if you see fish rising close to them, watch closely, sometimes the SmallMouth rise right up underneath them so you see the hiacynth making a swirl.

ps : Please beef up your tippet strength, the fish are showing immaculate pre-spawn condition and a 1Kg SmallMouth will drag you around on your 4Kg tippet for a long time. You will also note the fish are already exhibiting pre-spawn markings (black dots all over their top and fins, they basically look like Yellow rainbow trout)

Be kind to the pre-spawners, they're getting ready to produce our future seasons of fish. Now is the time to make sure you fight the fish hard and quickly, release the fish as fast as possible to minimise trauma and exhaustion. The fish are really energetic and fight extremely hard, using a heavier tippet will ensure you do as little harm to the fish as possible and aside from which, the increased flows have dropped the viz somewhat so spooking fish due to tippet diameter isn't really a concern anymore (except possibly when fishing a dry, then use a co-polymer line to keep your tippet TO the dry fly submerged)

HTH,