Offical Report
Fourteen members journeyed to Lake Fyans on Anzac weekend to be greeted by cold, wet and windy conditions. The fish did not seem to like the conditions either with the catch limited to 10 brown trout and 1 rainbow high quality trout for a very good leaned weight of 11.20kgs. Friday afternoon produced 3 fish, Saturday 3 fish and Sunday morning 5 fish.
The best fish prize was a deadheat between Tony Dorner and Gordon Mc Donald with browns of 1.455kg. Tony also won the best bag with 3 brown trout for 3.115kgs followed by Joe Mifsud and Gordon Mc Donald with 2 each. A fish were taken trolling.
Most members enjoyed the bistro on Saturday evening and have many funny stories to relate. A special thanks to the Caravan Park staff who assisted in making the trip successful.
Pedro Arvy's Thoughts
Friday there was a light to moderate NW wind and we hit the northern shores looking to polaroid. The levels have dropped since last October and there were many areas where there was extensive bands of weed from the shore until reasonably deep water. I thought to myself, why would a trout swim through 50-100 metres of weed into shore to look for food? That’s a lot of shallow water to move through. You could sort of wade these zones, but it was very messy. So we spent a bit of time drifting in the boat using various blind searching loch techniques to no avail.
After a few hours we found some good shallow water close in to shore with a great drop off. There was a lot of glare from cloud but it was still polaroidable. Unfortunately after 10 minutes the front came through and blasted us off the water with strong winds and rain. That night we learnt three fish were caught amongst my club members. Not a fly club, but a guide to the fishing as these are good anglers. The fishing was rated as tough.
Saturday morning I made a big mistake and slept in until 9am-ish. Given the wind from the previous evening I assumed it would be really windy the next day. Wrong. There was no wind until about 9am then and apparently there were plenty of fish rising from 7-8:30am!!!
By the time we hit the water at 11am it was windy and cloudy and I decided I had to do something different. So I trolled wet flies with my fly rod. Using a 3-4 inch per second sinking line I trolled various woolly buggers – green, black, orange and white for 4-5 hours. I used an Action Disc to add action to the fly. Is this fly fishing? Who knows but it didn’t feel like it. However it did feel like my lure was in the water longer and fishing more effectively than any cast and retrieve blind searching method. My mate was trolling with standard lutes and caught 1 reddie with myself blanking. Amongst our club only 3 further fish were caught on Saturday with conditions seen as very poor by all anglers. No fish were seen on the sounders and it was decided the fish weren’t feeding. Is this true? Or would a better fisherman have found fish? Who knows!
I can confirm the caught fish were stuffed full of small green/brown snails which is the same as their stomachs about 8 months ago. If I bothered the scorer, I’d be a catch and release fisherman but its good to know what fish have been eating.
There were two other fly fisherman on the lake. A local who owns a caravan there and a SA angler who had looked like he knew what he was doing with his boat fishing technique. Neither had fish with the SA angler saying Fyans has always been tough for him.
I came home and read Phil’s articles on these waters in Flystream and feel I should have spent more time searching for feeding fish in close rather than deciding there was too much weed. I should have put at least a couple of hours into this. Also, as mentioned in the recent how to fish lakes article, I should have got up earlier on the Saturday. That was a big mistake but it was a nice sleep…. Another idea, perhaps I should have found a windward shore clear of weed and miserable as it would have been, cast nymphs into the wind searching for fish that may have come in close to feed.