|
Perhaps
it was just the exuberance of coming up with a successful
pattern or maybe the Yak hair flies actually were superior,
whatever the case, we never did get to test the theory.
A crucial
factor in the fly design was its weight. Although we could
see the kob chasing prawns near the surface, we only seemed
to hook them when the fly was on or near the bottom.
The tide
too, played a role and the most successful technique was to
fish a runout tide about an hour after high. This usually
meant fishing a 7.00pm high tide with the best fishing occurring
between 9.00 pm and 11.00pm. The manager of the Sandbar had
his own theory about when the fish would bite and was adamant
that as soon as he played Louis Armstrong, we would start
catching. Perhaps the gravely voice of old Satchmo created
vibrations that kob found irresistible or perhaps it was pure
coincidence but whenever Louis began to see skies of blue,
an increase in activity was apparent!
The best
fishing technique in these conditions was to cast upstream
and let the fly drift into the strike zone. This was in sharp
contrast to our typical approach to saltwater flyfishing,
which involved casting as far as you could, and then stripping
like mad.
This modified
upstream nymphing took some getting used to but once we learned
to keep contact with the line, we were soon catching fish.
Takes were often very subtle with just a slight heaviness
being felt in the line. Most attacks seemed to occur on the
edge of the light and from the sounds of fish boofing along
the sandbanks, there were a lot bigger fish lurking out in
the dark. Our guess was that some of those monsters out there
weren't too interested in prawns and were probably feeding
on the smaller kob that we could see under the floodlights.
At other
times, the fish were just not interested in the fly unless
it was moving and in these situations, the takes were more
positive. Generally the fish we were targeting were under
legal size and on at least one occasion, one of our more adventurous
mates decided to scale his tackle down to a three weight only
to be rewarded by a three kilo kob that gave him a real workout
!
The biggest
fish we saw taken on fly was 10kg and my personal best was an
80cm fish, which was calculated to weigh 8kg. On that occasion,
the tide was running extra strong and I had resorted to an Airflo
DI-7 line to get to the bottom. I was also fishing with a very
small (for kob anyway) clouser: a size 4. I had been snagging
on the bottom a couple of times and at first I thought I had
hooked into one of the Sandbar's anchor lines. |
