For session 2, my group was headed to the Camporells Lakes. We did not have time to hike to these lakes during our practice week. Throughout the tournament we decided to send our coach/captain Glade Gunther to the Carlit Lakes and our reserve angler Nick Ryzka-Filipek to the Camporells Lakes. There they could gather as much information as possible to help each subsequent angler from the team who fished these venues. The only information I had to go on for my session was what Cody and Nick had gleaned from the first session there the day prior. Both the Camporells Lakes and the Carlit Lakes have very high densities of fish. However, the numbers of fish they produced showed just how difficult these fish could be to catch compared to many of the high lakes I have fished elsewhere.
The morning started with another 4:30 am wake up to get to the meeting area. For the Camporells Lakes we were taken in minibuses up a dirt road that is normally closed in order to shorten the hike a bit. Once we arrived, we hiked down a steep hill to a hut they have near the lower end of the lakes. There we were paired with our controllers. The hike in provided stunning views of the valley below clouded in mist and the lakes above that we were about to fish.
Dropping into the lakes before our session.
When I arrived at my beat, I set up four rods for the day. I rigged a 9' 6" 4 weight Sage Z-Axis and 9' 9" 4 weight Hardy Ultralite LL. To these rods I attached Soldarini 12' 4x leaders. To the leader I then was able to vary my rigging for two or three flies. I fished everything from two dry flies, to a dry and nymph, to a washing line, or a dry and two nymphs. All of my terminal rigging was done with 7x tippet due to the clarity of the water, the size of the flies I ended up using, and the wariness of the brown trout we experienced during practice. These 4 weight rods are not typically what I turn to for lake sessions, but they were ideal for the methods I used on the lakes during the championships. They also ended up being most of what I used during both lake sessions during the tournament.
Aside from the four weights, I also rigged a 10' 5 weight T and T Avantt with a floating line for a dedicated nymph crawling rod and a 10' 6 weight T and T Avantt II with an intermediate line in case I decided to pull streamers.
The beat map of the Camporells Lakes.
I started at beat 17 which was at an inlet to one of the smallest lakes. After rigging my rods I began a slow scan around the lake looking for fish. There were a couple of fish on the mud flat to the left of the inlet but they were scattered and in spooky shallow water. There was a congregation of fish near the weed beds at the inlet. These brown trout were my obvious first target. To the right of the inlet there was a channel between the bank and a weed bed. There were a few trout cruising this channel but far less than around the inlet. In the middle of the lake, there was a deep bowl beyond the weed beds where an occasional trout rose.
My first beat at the Camporells Lakes. The small inlet is out of the frame on the left side of the photo. The pocket in the weeds in front of the inlet is where I found a congregation of brown trout. The mudflat is at the top of the lake in the photo with the main weed bed opposite at the bottom of the photo.
I started my session with a washing line rig on one of the four weight rods. I had a small shuttlecock dry fly on the point and two unweighted size 20 zebra midges on dropper tags above. When I made my first cast to a trout I could see, I could tell that the unweighted zebra midges were not going to break the surface tension on the tippet very easily. However, I let the rig sit and eventually the dropper tags sank enough that a trout came up and ate one of the zebra midges. I set the hook and netted a 284 mm fish after a quick fight. It was good to be on the board only two minutes into the session.
I repeated the same procedure with the next fish I saw. Thankfully, I got the same response and put another brown trout on the board four minutes into my session.
After my second fish, the trout in the inlet area began to get a little more wary. I tried the same rig for a few more casts and caught a fish that was too short to score. However, it became clear with several more fish that I needed to get a bit deeper. The water was clear enough that I thought it was pretty shallow when I first arrived at the lake. However, after the first several fish, I could tell that most of the fish at the inlet were sitting in at least two to three feet of water. With my unweighted washing line rig, I was barely breaking the surface and the trout had to swim up to my midge pupae to take them. They became reluctant to make that effort after the first two fish I landed had alerted them that something might not be right.
I switched one of my zebra midges to the same fly but one that had a 1.5 mm tungsten bead. This rig allowed me to put the zebra midges about half way down through the column and a bit closer to the fish. I fished this rig to several more trout. Eventually, one made an aggressive swim toward the surface to take the weighted pupae. After it ate it made a similarly aggressive swim away from me just as I set the hook in the opposite direction. Sadly, our meeting came to a predictable conclusion and the fish took all three of my flies. Hopefully the barbless hook slid out quickly and it wasn't left with dangling jewelry for too long.
At this point I decided to switch tactics. I grabbed my double dry fly rod and cut both dry flies off. I then tied on two unweighted zebra midges again. This rig would allow a slow descent of my flies once they broke the surface tension. I would have to watch the behavior of the fish for takes since there would be no external cue like a dry fly sinking or a tug on the line.
The new rig definitely got more attention from the trout. A few casts in I watched the white wink of a trout I had cast to as it took in one of my zebra midges. I set the hook and brought my third trout to the net. This same scenario repeated two more times in the next 15 minutes until I had five trout on the scorecard with 35 minutes of my first sub-session behind me. Unfortunately, I also missed several more trout as well and pricked a couple more on the hookset. These small agile brown trout were really quick to spit the hook and it was hard to set quickly enough to hook them while still trying to avoid breaking 7x tippet.
Eventually, I had caught, stung, or spooked most of the trout near the inlet. I decided to give them a rest and see if I could come back later. I saw a couple of rises to the left on the mud flat. These fish required longer casts to target and there were a lot of trees obstructing my back cast on this side of the lake. I crept around the bank trying to cover targets on the mudflat as I went. For some reason, these trout were exceptionally wary, and they spooked even at unweighted zebra midges hitting the surface 6-10 feet in front of them.
I only found three fish to target on the flat and spent 10 minutes here. None of them were willing to eat. My controller let me know what time it was. I realized I had been mistiming the session in my head. My mind was still thinking I had more time after the river sessions the previous day.
I ran back to the inlet, but the trout had not returned. I continued on the bank to the right trying to get a bit of elevation to spot fish. I only saw one fish where there had been four or five during my scouting time. Evidently, they had moved to deeper water as the sun had gotten higher.
By this point I only had about five minutes left. There was not enough time to rerig my other four weight rod to fish deeper beyond the weeds. There were a couple of fish rising in the deep bowl beyond the weeds. I tried targeting some of them with my unweighted pupae but could not get any takers before my session ended. Man, that hour went by quickly.
I passed a few anglers on my way to the next beat. I had done better than most, but Tom Jarman of Australia had seven fish. I knew I had to keep my foot on the gas to try and catch up if I could.
My next beat was #7 on the large lake near the "refuge" hut. The left border was an inlet. There were patchy weed beds all through the bay to the right. There was then a deeper bowl followed by a shallow rocky point at the far-right side of my beat. Cody had fished this beat the day prior in windier conditions. Nick told me what he could but with different conditions I had to go mostly on instinct.
My second beat. The border was the inlet on the left side of the photo. It curved all the way around to the rocky point with the trees at the top of the photo. The patchy weed tops are visible out from the inlet with more patchy weed tops to the right into the bay.
The bay to the right of the inlet in my second beat.
After arriving at my beat, I rerigged my second four weight rod again to a three fly rig. With the remaining few minutes, I scouted as much of my beat as I could. There were quite a few fish roaming the weed edges near the bank. There were also scattered rises around the weed tops and out into the weeds in front of the inlet. There were fewer rises in the deeper water and along the point at the right of my beat. The sun angle was also behind me on the left side of my beat and transitioned to being in front of me as the lakeshore curved around at the right side of my beat. This made the left side of the beat better for spotting fish, at least during my scouting time.
I started my session with a washing line rig again. It quickly became evident that the trout were not willing to come up for this rig in the deeper water to the right of the inlet though. On a whim, I swapped the dry fly for a zebra midge with a two mm tungsten bead. This was basically a straight-line nymph rig with two lightly weighted and one unweighted zebra midge.
With the new rig, I made a few casts to the pockets in the weeds and out beyond the weed tops. It is hard to be patient enough in a competition session to retrieve this type of rig slow enough. I made agonizingly slow hand twist retrieves with occasional quicker hand twists to draw attention. A couple of casts in I had a hard grab. For some reason the fish did not get hooked though.
I left and started working my way toward the right where I had spotted fish during my scout time. Once again, the fish seemed to have mostly disappeared in the interim. I did spot a couple of fish though and made some presentations with my unweighted zebra midge rig. These fish were deeper than those I was fishing to in the last lake and the unweighted rig did not reach them quickly enough before they moved on. I switched to a two mm tungsten beaded zebra midge on the point. Unfortunately, the next two fish I targeted spooked at the plop of the nymph.
I was starting to sweat it. I was almost 20 minutes into the session and had missed my only take so far. I had a choice to continue around to the water on the right. There were fewer fish here, but they had also likely been less pressured in previous sessions. However, the sun angles were poor for spotting and there were a lot of trees and cliffs on this side of the lake that made casting challenging.
I opted to head back toward the inlet. I grabbed my three-midge rig again. On my third cast, just as I was ready to switch, a brown trout came from the weeds as I began to hang and took one of my droppers. I finally had my 6th fish on the board 25 minutes into my second sub-session.
I fished this rig a few more casts but did not get any more interest from the fish. I decided to take an even more static approach and switched my top dropper tag to a cdc alder fly imitation. I also moved toward the inlet where there were more fish actively rising. On my very first cast a trout blew up on the alder fly. Amazingly I hooked it and brought my 7th fish to the net. I immediately thought I had made a big mistake not switching earlier. Funnily enough, that was the only take I got to that dry fly the rest of the day, despite fishing it a lot in my remaining sub-sessions.
I kept fishing near the inlet. There were a couple of trout rising in pockets between the weeds 80 feet or more from the bank. I launched a few casts out among them. On one of those casts I found the only tree behind me and lost my whole rig. I rerigged as quickly as I could and decided to switch things up a bit. I put my dry fly about 13' from my fly line. I put a 1.5 mm bead zebra midge about 22" below the dry fly for shallower cruising fish and another zebra midge about 6' down for deeper cruising fish.
I began making some shorter casts at the inlet and mending and feeding slack to get a bit of a drift in the slight current there. I missed a fish on one of my midges a few drifts in. A couple of casts later my dry fly went down, and I set the hook into the weight of my 7th brown trout 37 minutes into my 2nd sub-session.
I stuck with the same program for the rest of my sub-session. With only 20 minutes left, I did not have much time for experimentation or covering a lot of water. I slowly worked my way to the right and then out to the edges of deeper water as the sub-session drew to a close. I landed two more brown trout that took my suspended zebra midges. I also had a few other takes that I missed.
Looking back on this sub-session, there were a lot of possible things I could have chosen to do differently. However, I am not sure any of them would have been better or worse. I did my best to feel my way instinctually through my time. During a lot of lake sessions where more active presentations are successful, it is easier to know when to move on when takes dry up and the action slows. However, with slower and static presentations, it becomes a bit more of a waiting game. When the fish are wary and challenging, and the fishing is slow, it is harder to know when to move on or when to change tactics. Coming out of this sub-session with four more fish was solid but the competitor in me always wonders if other choices would have led to a few more fish. I made reliable choices but not necessarily risky ones that could have paid off or led to a flop.
As I moved to my next lake, my nine fish still had me ahead of most anglers I met but I was behind Andrea Beretta of Italy who had 11 fish. David Arcay of Spain only had five at this point and I was going to the lake he was coming from. That did not inspire a lot of confidence in where I was headed given his capabilities.
My next beat was beat one. This beat was on the lowest lake which was also one of the smallest lakes in the Camporells Lake chain. When I arrived, there were fish rising and cruising the surface all around the lake. Initially I thought this session would be easy. Boy was I wrong.
My beat bordered the inlet on the left side again. I had a narrow casting window here which was constricted by my beat marker on the left and a cliff wall on the right. Most of the rest of my beat was made up of the cliff wall on the right. Just before the right-side boundary, there was a small area where I could cast near the base of the cliff without sliding off into the lake. From here I could spot a lot of fish cruising out over open water.
The view of my beat from the inlet. The beat border was just to the left of the grass island on the left side of the photo.
The right side of my beat with the cliff wall. My beat border was just out of sight around the point on the cliff.
During my scouting time I decided I had three possible approaches. 1. I could fish the inlet similarly to how I had fished the prior beat with a dry double dropper. 2. I could cast dries or lightly weighted nymphs to the couple of fish cruising the cliff wall. 3. I could fish dries or shallow rigs to the risers cruising over open water. Unlike in the first two lakes, there were more fish cruising over open water than there were fish near the inlet. I decided to work to the inlet and the cliff wall first, then spend a good chunk of time on the open water fish, and then reassess based on my results.
At the inlet, there were two fish that had been active in the corner of my beat before the session. It is possible that I got too close to the edge of the lake because these fish flat disappeared at the beginning of my session. After losing that opportunity, I fished the inlet with the dry double dropper rig for about 10 minutes with no interest.
I quickly ran up and over the cliff to the right side of my beat where I could cling to the shallower slope of the cliff. There were fewer fish visible than during my scout time, but there were still quite a few cruising just under the surface over open water.
I started making casts with a two dry fly rig. I had an ant on the dropper for visibility with a small shuttlecock on the point. I had five or six fish come and inspect my shuttlecock with as much scrutiny as I have ever seen from a trout. They would sit under it and look from multiple angles before swimming of not to be seen again. I did have two fish half-heartedly take the shuttlecock that I missed. I then switched to unweighted zebra midges hoping to time my casts right when cruising fish were approaching. I ended up spending half an hour switching flies and approaches without hooking a single fish. I have fished to some pretty discerning trout across the globe over the years. I do not remember any that were harder to catch than the fish I spotted seemingly happily feeding from this cliff.
With 20 minutes left I ran back to the inlet. I switched my two-fly rig to a couple of crunchers. One had a 2.3 mm bead, and the other was unweighted. I began covering sporadic rises and fishing the available water off the inlet. A few casts in I finally locked up into my 10th fish. This was the one and only fish I caught in this sub-session. I was glad to be moving on hopefully to some easier fish in my last beat.
I am still not sure what I should or could have done differently to convert the interested fish into taking fish on this lake. I was already fishing 7x tippet. I would have switched to 8x to see if it helped but I had not brought any with me. I also should have had tippet degreaser to see if sinking my tippet would have made a difference. The only other change I might have made was switching to a single dry fly or single nymph to see if the trout would have been less suspicious. I would like to go back without the pressure of a competition session and see if I could put a program together that worked for these fish.
My last beat was beat #16 on Long Lake. The beat was over half of this narrow lake. Most of the beat was quite shallow but there were two deeper bowls near the outlet. There were a few scattered rises on the shallow side of the beat where the trail came to the lake. By this time, the skies had gotten cloudy so it was not possible to spot fish individually unless they rose. However, while I was near deeper water near the outlet during my scouting time, the sun popped out just long enough for me to see good numbers of fish cruising around this area.
Looking toward the shallow side of my beat from near the outlet.
Near the outlet at the left edge of my beat. There was a deeper bowl here with a concentration of fish.
This beat basically left me two options. 1. Find and target scattered individual rising fish in the shallow water comprising most of the beat. 2. Focus on the two deep bowls near the outlet and try to intercept cruising fish. Given the light conditions, I opted for option two and began at the deep bowl to the right of the outlet.
I started with the dry double dropper rig and covered various spots. There was a right to left crosswind that allowed me to soak the rig for 30-60 seconds before the line bellied and a mend was required or I needed to recast. The cdc alder fly pattern did not respond to being mended very well. Even after treatment it would sink a bit too easily in the chop when some tension had formed on the line. Compounding the issue, I was forced to use single hand spey casts for most of my time because of limited back casting room. This kept the dry in the water with fewer opportunities for it to dry out on back casts. It is possible I should have changed the dry fly, but I was hoping it would still be a pattern that the fish would eat. I also did not want a fly that was too buoyant which would not react quickly enough when a trout took one of my flies hanging below.
It did not take too long for the trout to respond to my flies. I had a take that I missed and then my dry fly went down a few minutes later. I connected on the hook set and landed my 11th trout seven minutes into this last sub-session. After measuring and scoring the fish, I made my next cast to the same general area. As it was settling, I noticed the dry fly looking a bit odd. It did not go down, but it seemed to be drifting ever so slightly to the right which was upwind. I set the hook and was tight to my 12th trout. Both fish had taken the deeper zebra midge that was sitting around 6' below the dry fly.
At this point, I was only nine minutes into the sub-session and feeling confident. I felt like I had the right rig and the right location. The wind started to pick up in speed. I switched flies so that both of my zebra midges had two mm tungsten beads. I was hoping they would sink and settle a little quicker this way since each cast did not have long until the crosswind created drag in my line.
Over the next 40 minutes, frustration ensued. I kept getting occasional takes but could not connect with any of them. I moved over to the next deeper water bowl near the outlet. Because of the shallow water in between the bowls, I could not cast back upwind. I was forced to make casts perpendicular to the wind or quartering downwind. I had six consecutive solid takes where my dry fly sunk. Not a single one of them connected with more than a quick pin prick that slide out of the trout's mouth.
With five minutes left, I quickly switched to my dedicated nymph crawling rod to see if a different presentation might result in a converted hookup. I did end up getting one hard grab but my hookset did not connect. I ended up finishing the session with 12 fish for the day. I knew it was not going to be a winning score, but I hoped it would keep me in the top five to help our team. Luckily, I slid into 5th place for the session, just behind Tom Jarman of Australia with 14 fish and beating Ollie Bassett of New Zealand who also had 12 fish but less cumulative length.
Looking back on this last sub-session, I still feel I made the right decision on where and how to fish. I was getting plenty of takes, I just was not converting takes into hookups. Dry dropper and indicator rigs in lakes often result in low hookup rates with smaller fish in my experience. The main issue I think I had in this instance was that my hooksets were pulling the flies out of the trout's mouth as they cruised upwind to eat them. I should have tried to find ways to make my casts at more of an upstream angle to see if my hooksets would have connected more frequently.
Our team had a solid 2nd session. In addition to my 5th place on the Camporells Lakes, Jack Arnot finished 10th on the Vicdessos River, Michael Bradley won his session on the Carlit Lakes, Mike Komara was 7th on the Tet River, and Cody Burgdorff was 8th on the Aude River. After session 2, our team had moved up to 3rd place. We were two points ahead of Spain and 9 points behind Italy.
