For the third session of this year's World Fly Fishing Championship, my group was headed to the Aude River. Going into the championship, this was the river I was least looking forward to fishing. The main reason was that European grayling were likely to be one of the dominant target species. I love fishing for European grayling and I have enjoyed it every time I have fished for them. The problem is in the first part of their name. They only occur in Europe and I get to see them once every couple of years for a world championship. Trying to keep up with other top level anglers who fish for them regularly is a difficult task. European grayling have different behaviors and preferences from trout and I find myself second guessing my decisions in ways that I don't when I am fishing for trout.
To help overcome some of these issues with grayling, we had hired former French world championship team member Yannick Riviere as a guide for a couple of days during practice. Yannick offered some good advice on setting up drifts and casts so that there was tension and strike detection immediately during the drift. The issue was that there were very few grayling available in the practice water and that water had been fished over repeatedly by most of the teams. As a result, it was impossible to get feedback from the fish as to whether the changes I was trying to implement were helpful or not. I ended up leaving those practice days more confused than confident, which is not how I like to feel going into a competition session.
I had drawn beat 30 on the upper half of the Aude for my morning sub-session. I was then rotating to beat 7 on the lower Aude. When I arrived at beat 30, my controller mentioned that the water was much lower than it had been the previous two sessions. Whether that was a good thing or not I was not sure.
I have to give a shout out to my controller Lenka as well. She was a member of the French women's team that got a silver medal in the Czech Republic at the women's world fly fishing championship back in May. She was a keen angler and a fun person to spend the day with. She took the photos below where I am pictured fishing.
The lower 3/4 of my beat was one long slow flat. There was only one outcrop of bedrock in this stretch to provide any features. Above that flat there was a fairly deep run. It had a fast center current and slow nearly stagnant water on both sides. Above that run was some shallow water before another shallow run with a tree over the top of it. At first glance I thought there might be some fish here, but it had small gravel on the bottom and fast current from the surface all the way to the bottom. Above that run there was another run with less depth than the lowest run but still enough to hold fish. The beat ended just upstream of this run before reaching the tail out pool from a hydro dam.
I rigged the same three river rods from my first session. You can see the details in my first post in this series at this link.
During my scout time I looked hard at the runs at the top of my beat to try and get an idea of specific locations within them to focus on. I also spent quite a bit of time looking at the flat. There were fish in the flat but all I could see were the forked dark tails of chubs roaming around in schools. I decided that with only two hours, I should focus on the two better runs at the top of my beat. There were probably some trout or grayling in the flat below, but I likely would have had to sort through a lot of chubs to find any and I could waste a lot of time that would likely be better spent nymphing the faster water upstream.
The bottom of the first run I fished looking down to the extended flat below.
The middle portion of the first run I fished. The trees on the left were on a small island.
The upper portion of the first run I fished.
I started at the lower end of the deeper run near the top of my beat. I sorted through the flies which Cody had used the day before and a flashy perdigon which Yannick had showed us that looked like a Candela perdigon. Thinking back, I know Cody fished a simple claret perdigon here, but I cannot remember the other couple of patterns he fished.
I started with a 3.3 mm bead nymph on the point and a small 2.3 mm bead nymph on the dropper. Based on Yannick's and Cody's advice, I was fishing one step heavier than I normally would. I was also trying to maintain a little more tension and a shallower sighter angler than is typical for me to increase strike detection from soft taking grayling. After a few drifts this way in each location, I would allow my sighter to get a bit more vertical or inverted for the second half of my drift. I also added some jigging motions with the rod tip as Cody had caught the majority of his fish the day prior after animating his flies during the drift.
I worked up through the lower portion of this run for a while with no response from the fish. The current against the island blocked my access to the middle part of the run so I quickly moved around it to fish the upper half of the run. A few minutes into fishing this portion I had a jarring take and set the hook into what ended up being a 258 mm grayling. I was finally on the board 18 minutes into my morning sub-session.
I went straight back to the location of my first fish. About five drifts later I set the hook into another very obvious take and another grayling came to the net. Both fish had taken the small Candela-like perdigon with a silver bead on the dropper tag. I was a bit surprised at this point. Everything I had been told before the championship was that the grayling in the Aude would take very softly and their bites would be hard to detect. The first two grayling almost set the hook themselves with how positively they took the fly.
I kept working up the run in the same process. I switched back and forth between a lighter rig with two nymphs and a heavier rig with a chenille worm pattern on the point and a small perdigon on the dropper. As I neared the top, I was ticking bottom too regularly, so I dropped the bead size on my point fly. I did not find any more willing fish in my first pass through this run. I did snag two identical rigs that a previous competitor had lost in nearly the same spot in the run. The point fly on both was a black nymph with a silver rib and orange hot spot butt. The dropper fly was a drab pheasant tail. I presume these flies were from the Spanish competitor who fished here in the first session. I put them in my fly patch and kept them in the memory bank for later.
I next sped quickly to the shallow run with the tree over it. I lightened up my rig to fish the shallower water of this run. However, as I started speed fishing through it, it became obvious that the water was not slowing down much near the bottom. The substrate appeared to be almost entirely gravel in this run and there was not any slower deeper holding water that I could find along the length of it.
The shallow run with the tree over it that I moved to after my first two fish. The bottom was nearly all gravel and the water did not end up appearing very "fishy" when I covered it.
I quickly moved to the next run above. On my first upstream pass I was expecting fish somewhere along the way. None materialized though until I put a cast under the tree branches at the top of the run. This was a typical brown trout hiding spot and unsurprisingly I caught a small brown trout on my first presentation under the trees.
The top run in my beat. My first brown trout came under the overhanging green tree branches.
This was the top of the holding water that I had available in this beat. There was a run just above but the deeper holding water at the top was just beyond my flag. I decided to start fishing down the two runs again to see if I could pick up fish on another pass.
I switched flies and went back through the run where I had just caught the brown trout. I tried the slow eddy on the bank with no luck and then began working some inverted sighter drifts in the main current seam. About 2/3 of the way down the run I had a take as my flies were just starting to swing and another grayling took my dropper fly.
I was an hour and a half into my morning session with five fish on the board. I knew my pace so far was not going to keep up with the rest of the field. At times like this it can be easy to get discouraged and lose focus or energy in a session. That's when I have to draw on that inner pride that refuses to give up even if when I know I am not likely to come out on top or even do well.
I ran back down to the lowest run and started the process again with a new set of flies. I'd tied on an orange butt black perdigon on the point that had a similar color scheme to one of the flies I had retrieved off the bottom in this run. I do not remember which fly I put on the dropper tag.
I worked up through the middle of the run again with no takes. As I reached the top, I focused on stalling some drifts in the slow water on the far side. I ended up catching two more grayling from this part of the run.
After these two fish I quickly worked back down the run with different drifts and fly weights. I then crossed at a shallow spot near the top to get a different angle on the other side of the run and to fish the water adjacent to the island that I could not cover from the other side. Unfortunately, the minutes ticked away, and I failed to find any more fish in the morning sub-session. I ended with six fish, five of them being grayling.
Fishing the far side of the bottom run in my beat.
I talked to my controller afterward. She said I had fished it better than the previous two anglers but that was a small comfort when my score had not reflected her sentiment. Going back to what I said earlier, I am sure an angler more versed in grayling could have figured out a way to scrape a few more out of this session. I just wish I knew what I could have done differently to close that gap myself.
In the afternoon I moved down to beat 7. This beat was at least 600-700 meters or more long. Much of it was in a short gorge and I could not get access to various parts of it to scout it. That did not stop me from running up the road in waders in 90-degree Fahrenheit heat to try and get glimpses of various parts of my beat. I can only imagine what the drivers going by were thinking as they watched me looking like a crazed man trying to cut weight to drop a weight class for a wrestling match.
It turned out I had misunderstood my controller and I ended up having half an hour more to scout my beat than I thought I did. The extra time did not help much though. She took me to the top of the beat by car where we shimmied literally through a patch of bamboo jungle to get a look at the top of the beat. I still could not see the center 2/3 from either vantage point but she told me I had three areas of current in the beat.
I started at the bottom of my beat in a nice looking run. The bottom was mostly bedrock here so the habitat was a bit patchier than it would have been if the substrate was all cobble and boulders.
The nice run at the bottom of my beat.
I began fishing with a dry dropper rig in the slower tailout of the beat hoping a suspended presentation would bring some trout or grayling. All I caught were small coarse fish that kept slapping at my dry fly and nymphs. With the heat and the warm water, I figured the trout and grayling were probably focused on the deeper faster water above. I quickly moved on and switched to two nymphs.
I worked my way up the run, expecting fish in every nook and cranny. Eleven minutes into my sub-session I finally hooked a fish and was surprised by a 331 mm rainbow trout. I was into the better water in the run now and hoping the action would pick up. I tried to be thorough but had given myself 45 minutes to cover this lengthy piece of water. I knew that it would be at least a 10-minute climb up to the road and a run to the upper part of my beat and I wanted an hour to fish any of the better water I found there.
Four minutes after the rainbow, I hooked a brown trout as I neared the center of the run. I quickly had it in the net and I was up to eight fish for the session. Looking at the heavier water at the top of the run, I was fully expecting there to be more fish waiting as this was prime water given the warm conditions.
I fished through the entirety of the rest of the run without a touch. Not even a sniff apart from more tiny coarse fish that kept bumping my flies during the drift. I tried standard nymphs and also some junk flies hoping to cajole a fish into eating. I really wish I knew what else I could have done here. I felt I was fishing smoothly and in control, I was making good presentations with my strike detecting senses on alert. But nothing came. I had reached and slightly surpassed the time limit I had set for myself, and it was time to move on.
My controller and I made the climb up to the road and then ran up to the tiniest of goat trails descending through the jungle to the river. Trying to get three rods through all the branches was comical at best. Eventually we found our way to the river and a heavy deep run at the top of the small gorge. Looking at the water, I thought I had hit the jackpot.
There was a lot of water to cover in this run with slow seams on both sides and rollers down the middle. I quickly took to the task of working up the near side. When I reached the top, I dropped back to the bottom and began working up the far side. I switched flies and weights, drifting angles, tippet lengths. I worked near to far, top to bottom, and shallow to deep. Again, I was plagued by small coarse fish, but no salmonids showed themselves.
Kneeling between gaps in the rocks while fishing the deepest run in my beat.
I was nearing the top of the far side of the run when I hooked into something more than substantial. I saw a golden flash and knew I either had a giant brown trout or a very big barbel. Whichever it was, I had little chance of landing it on 7x tippet. I played the fish long enough to see that it had a forked tail and a non-trout shaped head. It was a barbel that was about 26-28" long. Once I confirmed the species, there was no point in continuing the fight since barbel did not count. I pointed my rod at the fish till it broke the tippet and went about rerigging.
The barbel ended up being the only fish I hooked in this run. It looked like the best water I had in my beat so I'm still a bit baffled. However, my controller told me after the session that neither of the previous competitors had hooked any fish in this run so I was not alone in my ineptitude there.
Hooked up on the barbel.
Now that I had reached this point in the river, I could see the water above that I had not been able to scout properly before the session. Upstream there was another faster shallow run with only a few pockets to break the current. Then there was an island with shallow fast water on both sides. Above that there was one last shallow riffled run coming in from the giant stagnant pool at the top of my beat.
I started fishing the fast run above covering the few pockets below rocks that slowed the water. On the second turbulent pocket I came to, I had a good take and set the hook. After over an hour without a fish I had finally hooked not one, but two brown trout simultaneously! Initially I thought I might be able to land both fish but unfortunately the fish on the point fly swam under a bedrock ledge and severed the tippet. Luckily, I still landed the fish on the dropper tag, a 237 mm brown trout.
I hooked the double brown trout in the pocket just downstream of the protruding rock. The tippet was cut on the dark bedrock ledge seen just below.
I continued up the rest of this fast run. I hoped for another trout tucked into a tiny pocket out of the current but could not find one. I then moved to the side channel to the right looking upriver. The water was shallow here but there were two pockets under trees on the bank that I thought might hold a wary brown trout looking for cover.
I swapped my dropper tag for a dry fly and started covering these pockets. The first pocket did not produce a fish. I reached the second and fed some casts as deep under the trees as I could. There was a branch that was only a couple of inches off the water here. I had to drop my leader to the water to drift under it and the resume high sticking my leader after it passed the branch. On my second attempt at this procedure, my dry fly sunk slowly. I did not think it was a take, so I let it pass under the branch. As I watched it drifting underwater, I saw the dry fly twitch and set the hook. A small but welcome 207 mm brown trout had taken my nymph. This fish brought me up to 10 fish for the session with 24 minutes to go in my afternoon sub-session.
Looking upstream to the side channel that held my 10th fish. I caught it under the trees which were almost touching the river on the far bank.
I moved up to the last piece of potential holding water in my beat. It was the shallow riffle coming in from the stagnant pool above. I had a decent amount of time left so I was careful to work it near to far and back to front as thoroughly as I could. It looked like the type of water a brown trout might tuck into in warm conditions. Alas, despite various flies and presentations, I could not find any more willing fish. I ran back down to fish the run below with five minutes left but I knew it was likely a fruitless endeavor, which it ended up being.
Kneeling in the river to keep a low profile while fishing the last holding water in my beat.
I ended the session on 10 fish. I honestly felt I had fished pretty well despite what my score reflected. I did not lose any fish. I had connected with all of the takes from trout or grayling I had registered, and I had not made any mistakes leading to catastrophic tangles. Obviously, there were more fish to be had which I did not find a way to catch. I still do not know what pieces of the puzzle I needed to put together to find more. Without spending a month each year in Europe to target grayling I doubt I ever will.
My 10 fish ended up putting me in 9th place for the session. It was less than I had hoped for, and I felt I had let our team down a bit. Luckily the rest of the boys fished well in their sessions with 3rd (Cody), 14th (Jack), 2nd (Michael Bradley), and 12th (Mike Komara) place finishes in their sessions. We had held onto 3rd place as a team after the session with Spain 9 points ahead of us and the Czech Republic 11 points behind.
