Ja i think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to spend all day nymphing if you start using a 5 or 6 wt, like all the other guys said fly rods always seem to be able to bend more than you think they can handle.
One thing GGY taught me - When fishing for yellows, before you even 'cast', always have a plan for landing a fish - there is more often than not a section of quiet, slower water nearby, so if you get a nice fish you know exactly where to wade to to give yourself an easier fight.
HI BenzoV,
Nope - I am Grant, but you are not the first to ask about George Kieser - I am not related to him though. I was at Hilton College.
I actually agree with Gerrit - if the fish are so uncontrollable, i recon they are probably foul hooked - you will not be able to turn a foul hooked yellowfish very easily at all so that makes the most sense.
Man, i've got a lus for a little bit of SM Yellowfish action. Gotta see if i can't get up to the orange next week.
"So here’s my point. Don’t go and get your ego all out of proportion because you can tie a fly and catch a fish that’s dumb enough to eat a car key.." - Louis Cahill - Gink and Gasoline
I heard GGY say that on THE podcast series as well. This area I was fishing in is a little side stream that actually flows into a nice calm pool, which then tails out into fairly fast flowing water, which then eventually joins the main flow of the vaal. My point being that besides the stream where I hooked the fish, there is plenty of calm water to play a fish in. These fish just headed straight for the tail of the pool which was about 15m away, and once they were in there I knew I had to start running, falling over rocks and swimming.
Thats half the problem you are facing.
A #9 will not afford the tipped protection that a lighter rod would (this can buffer the breaking strain of your tippet by up to 30%) so you will probably find that you are playing down your fight for fear of popping tippet.
I fish up to 3x stoft (4.2kg or so I think) on my #6 and you can quite happily pull on that with all your might without damaging the rod. (You'd be amazed at how a fly rod can fold in half) and with that setup have easily subdued some pretty decent fish with the largest being a 9kg cat. By applying as much force as you dare, using the appropriate tippet and using side strain as Grant mentioned you should easily be able to subdue near anything the vaal can throw at you on a #9.
One last thing that may help is that often with smallies if you relax your pressure on them a bit they tend to relax aswell and you can then regain your composure and bring them to hand quite quickly.
With muddies I find if you can lift them off the substrate quickly then half the battle is won as they use their shape to just hold station and once they are unable to do so it becomes far less of a mexican stand off.
"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure." - Mark Twain
Andrew Schlosser
I started out with nothin' and I still got most of it left - Seasick Steve
Thats a vicious lie and you know it man
I lit the smoke atleast 70% of the way through the fight and thats just cause I couldnt get him onto the bank to grab his bottom lip
Oh and that #6 is a 7pc so it may look limp but all those ferrules add up to quite a bit of pulling power
"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure." - Mark Twain
I'm no expert, but I can share these two pieces of advice:
What Turner once told us at a Bells is to try and get the fish's head above water as quickly as possible as well. This will tire the fish almost immediately and you can land it very, very quickly. If it manages to go on a run again, just keep on trying to lift it's head above water.
This with side pressure like mentioned will get the fish in the net quickly.
This works for average sized fish, but if you have a bus on the other end (3,5kg+) then it becomes a challenge and I would not recommend this unless you KNOW your tippet will hold!
With such a large fish, if it struggles and the tail hits the tippet it could be game over.
Another thing to consider, if you say you used to do competition "papgooi" then you should know when a buddy helps you land a fish you usually wait for your buddy to get behind the fish and then you give slack and 99% of the time the fish swims straight into the net while trying to get into deeper water again.
The same principal can be applied when landing yellows. Get the fish a bit tired, get it upstream of you with the net behind the fish, give slack and the fish should gently swim into the net downstream.
I landed a bus like this in a very strong current a few weeks back.
I have seen a lot of people trying to "fish" their catch into the net while battling the current, make the current work for you, even when fighting the fish.
please correct me if I am wrong in my statement below, but this is my take on what read out of the other posts:
A fish without oxygen tires quickly. Yellows hangs in the rapids, due to higher oxygen levels in the rapids. Therefor you want to get the fish into calm water, less oxygen and less current to fight. The head above water is also to reduce a fish's oxygen intake.
Frederick
"If women are so bloody perfect at multitasking, how come they can't have a headache and sex at the same time?" - Billy Connolly
"The harder you try, the luckier you get" - Gary Player.
"If your mind can conceive it; and your heart can believe it - then you can achieve it." - Muhammad Ali
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