Jungle Warfare

Listen up chaps.

Reports are coming in that it’s all getting a bit overgrown down on the river. This is due to a number of factors. Sun. Rain. Steve getting married on a Saturday and inviting several work party members to the ceremony. All these have contributed to the ongoing river overgrowth situation.

But fear not chaps. HQ have come up with a few suggestions for making the most of things. There are three elements to remember: strategy, tactics, and resources.

Firstly, the strategy. Rather than seeing the terrain as a challenge, we make it an opportunity. How? By using the element of surprise.

In clear water, anything that can help you approach the fish unnoticed is a bonus.

Consider the entry of the fly into the water. A large fly [or even a small one] falling suddenly into the stream can easily spook a wild trout in clear water. But where grass, reeds and nettles hang over the bank, they can act as a cushion.

Overhanging grass and Reedmace

The fly lands on a blade of grass, the stem of a nettle or the leaf of a bulrush [more properly Reed Mace]. The line slowly pulls tight. The fly slides along the leaf, eventually falling the short distance to the water surface, and landing gently and unobtrusively.

The trick is not to be tempted into speeding up the process. If you pull on the line the hook will invariably bury itself in the leaf or stem, and then you either have to pull hard to get it out, causing all sorts of ructions in the undergrowth, or approach the snagged fly, spooking every fish in the area. Let things develop at a natural pace and often the fly will extract itself unaided.

Let's play spot the river

Consider also the banks of weed in the river that allow us to wade up close to the fish. Trout feel very safe and secure with a roof of weed over their heads, or close enough so they can easily retreat in to it. But if you are wading slowly upstream, the weed over and behind the trout can provide a good barrier between you and the wary quarry.

If you’re fishing from the bank, the growth, sometimes shoulder high, is also excellent cover. Standing tall on a bare bank instantly spooks wild fish. By hiding behind the fringe of reeds and nettles you can easily conceal yourself from the fish. It may, on occasions, make casting harder, but at least you will be making that difficult cast to a river with fish still in it.

Fish caught from the bank

Also, all this growth overhanging the river is home to an army of terrestrial insects – Crane flies, Soldier Beetles, Caterpillars, Spiders. All will at one time or another fall into the water where the trout will happily devour them.

Oh and talking of Spiders, it’s worth looking around at their webs in the long grass and reeds. One day in June I came across a web that stretched right across the river from bank to bank. It was full of small brown upwings – I tied on a small Lunn’s Particular and had take after take, all the way upstream.

Secondly, tactics. With so much growth around on the banks and also in the trees, the straightforward overhead cast you’d use on the lake is rarely possible. Often you are casting not much more than the leader. You have to use a variety of other tactics to get your fly on the water.

Sometimes a side cast is possible – shifting the overhead cast into a horizontal plane to avoid overhanging bows. Other circumstances call for the Roll Cast, which can be executed without the line extending behind you.

Then for the really difficult, overhung swims, there’s the Bow and Arrow Cast. With a bit of practice you can fire a fly in a straight line along the rod with no danger of catching it in the undergrowth or the trees above. Or your thumb.

Finally, equipment.

When you’re wading at the top of the river, a short, light rod is a real boon. I use a 7’ long 3 weight, which I can easily wield without danger of catching branches overhead. On the other hand, at the bottom of the river, fishing off the bank, a longer rod may well give a bit more control over the fly.

As for the flies themselves, those with built in buoyancy give a real advantage. There’s next to no room for flicking flies around to get them dry.

Two possibilities offer themselves – flies tied with CDC and those that use closed-cell foam.

CDC is one of the great materials for fly tying. The feathers, from the area around a ducks preen gland, hence Cul de Canard [ducks arse], are naturally waterproof. Their filaments are also incredibly fine, replicating insects’ own delicate appendages.

The one downside is that, once waterlogged, they take a great deal of restoring to get them working properly again. The French however have a way of dealing with this.

Parachute pattern tied with a pink foam post...

Personally, this year I’ve tended to favour parachute flies tied with a foam post.

The buoyancy of the post keeps the fly afloat without the need for too many turns of hackle, which helps to keep the fly looking natural in the clear water. I tie mine with  posts of pink packaging foam that I nicked from a photocopier repairman at the office – the pink stands out well against dark or light water.

...and the fish it caught

Parts of the river are now thick with Ranunculus, or Water Crowsfoot, with hardly a clear channel to cast your fly over. In these swims the Funneldun, created by the ever-inventive Neil Patterson, is ideal. It floats hook point up, so it rarely snags.

Okay chaps, end of briefing. Good luck out there, and give them hell.