It’s been really tense for a few weeks now. We’ve been round to all our friends’ houses, looking for somewhere we could go fisihing that isn’t a supermarket car park… made a list of everything we might need or need to replace, we’ve got plenty of leaders, we cleaned our lines, the reels are running like clockwork, we’ve got the perfecr gear we got for Christmas, the fly boxes are organized and arranged like a parade of little soldiers, we’ve even bought snacks. In short, we’re ready and the season doesn’t open before Saturday… and I didn’t mention the tic of checking your weather app every five minutes…
But… what if things don’t go quite as planned? What if the water is murky and the current stronger than expected, or if the spring weather plays one of its favorite tricks on us in mid-March and the temperature drops? We’ll have to adapt and maybe even cheat a little if we want to catch fish… Of course, there are all the nymphs that perfectly imitate all the maggots in the world… But that’s not all…
I remember a season opening I did when I was a beginner fly fisherman and nothing could stop me. We were in Normandy, the weather was awful, cold, rainy, the river was high and brown… In short, with the guys from the APNLE (the parisian fly fishing association where I learned everything), we were looking glum and thinking more about getting back to the cars to pour ourselves a nice cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette… But I had a secret weapon in my fly box: I had brought back some San Juan Worms from Montana, where I had started out fishing! The thing that looks like an earthworm, and that you can pass off as a fly!!! A fly fisherman’s delight! And it worked! One, two, then three trout, one after the other! Not local brown trout, but rainbow trout that just came out a fishfarm, which made me very happy as a beginner! The San Juan Worm, a real killer. That was over 30 years ago, and nymphing was not that trendy.
Later, I returned to my beloved Aveyron (South West of France, and there, while the waters of the river Lot were still high, I put into practice what I had been doing all winter in reservoirs… The streamer! I saw the guys with dead bait pulling out voracious trout after months of spawning… without an hesitation, I took a beautiful marabout streamer out of my box, not too big and, like a wet fly, I casted downstream, stripping in and making sure my “fly” crossed the whole river… It worked like a charm! Bang! Hooked! And what a beautiful fish!
So there you have it, something that might save your day, or at least keep your fingers busy before the opening day. (The San Juan variant with a bead is perfect for high waters…) And a streamer presented by Jean-Paul Dessaigne is the best! (for Jean-Paul’s streamer, you want to hit the square on YouTube screen = Subtitles / Cranked wheel = Automatic translate –> English).
Le San Juan Worm avec bille :
Le Streamer qui tue :
Et pour finir un petit film d’un mec qui vous montre comment se servir de Streamers en rivière !