For the fourth session, my group was headed to the Vicdessos River. The "Vic" is a small beautiful high gradient river which descends the northeastern Pyrenees until it meets the Auriege River. Like the other rivers in the competition, the Vic is heavily modified by a series of hydro dams.
The Vic is locally known as a moody river. The fish here can be fickle and feed in a stop start fashion. In competitions the previous couple of years, the Vic had produced good numbers of fish. However, the locals we talked to said the river had been fishing poorly so far this year and the scores in the first few sessions of the championship reflected that. There were good numbers of fish being caught but the majority of them were often under the 200 mm limit that fish have to reach before they count. The result was a lot of anglers were finishing sessions with zero to five fish in the first three sessions of the championship.
Cody had finished well here the day before with eight fish and a 3rd place. He had mostly fished a two-nymph rig with small heavy perdigons. He said most of the beats were heavy pocketwater and he had not seen any rising fish. As a result, he did not think I needed to bring a dry fly rod. Based on Cody's information I packed my two nymph rods in the car the night before, but I left my dry fly rod in the garage of our chalet. I figured managing two rods would make my life easier if there did not seem to be an expected need for the dry fly rod. This was my first mistake before I had even started the session.
I drew beat two for my morning subsession. It started with some shallow pocketwater above a small bridge. It then narrowed a bit through some boulders before reaching a flat above. Then there was some higher gradient shallow pocket water. Near the top there was a nice deep run with a canal that diverted a good chunk of the river around my beat. I was not allowed to fish the canal. Unsurprisingly, I saw a lot of fish in the canal when I walked through it during my scouting time. Above this run there was one last section of boulders and the tailout of a run exiting the beat above me.
Looking at the bottom half of my beat from the bridge.
The canal where all the happy fish were. :)
After scouting my beat, the deep run near the top was the most obvious holding water in the beat. I decided to start just below this spot where I could enter through the pocket water below without spooking the run. I would fish to the top and then run back down to the narrowed pocketwater near the bottom. From there I would fish my way back up to the deep run and cover it again if I had enough time at the end of the session.
I started by quickly covering a few of the shallow pockets below the run. I pricked a couple of undersized brown trout but that was it. I moved up to the run above and kneeled to hide behind the rocks that separated the river and the entrance to the canal.
The shallow pockets I started fishing in with the canal in the foreground.
I started fishing the run with a nymph a few feet below a dry fly hoping for a suspended fish or a rise to the dry. A few minutes later I swapped rods and went to two nymphs. I fished the near edge, then the middle, and then the eddy on the far bank. I started fairly light and then moved progressively heavier all the way until I had a 3.8 mm bead on the point and a 2.3 mm bead on the dropper. I tried shallow leading sighter angles, vertical sighter angles, jigged drifts, inverted sighter drifts. The fish here had clearly been hit hard in the first two sessions and so far they wanted nothing to do with me. Eventually I had spent a full half hour on this run with nothing to show for it. It was time to move on.
The run and the pocketwater at the top of my beat. The beat ended about where the white car is parked.
I lightened up my rig and moved to the pockets above. In the second pocket I set the hook on a take and my heart sank as I saw the flash of a measurable brown trout before we parted ways at the tippet knot. I was fishing (0.08mm) 8x based on Cody's recommendation from the prior day. I had not set the hook very hard but apparently it was hard enough. I decided to switch back to (0.10mm) 7x. Even if I ended up with fewer takes the rest of the session, I wanted to make sure I converted them.
After rerigging, I fished the last few pockets. I then put a few casts in the tailout at the top of my beat. I was starting to feel the pressure though. I was 50 minutes in with no fish to show for it. I decided I needed a change of scenery and ran to the boulder strewn pockets near the bottom of my beat.
I ran down the road a crossed below my intended target pockets. The sun was low, and I wanted it behind my back for visibility. It was nearly impossible to see my sighter looking into the rays peeking through the trees. A couple of casts in I missed a quick taking fish. I left that pocket alone for a minute and moved to another. I then moved back to try again. This time I connected when the trout took and I was finally on the board 57 minutes into the morning 2 hour session. At 210 mm it was not large, but I really needed that skunk off my back.
I caught my first fish in the channel between the two larger boulders near the center of the photo.
After this first fish, I continued fishing through the pocketwater above. There were not many likely holding spots through this section, but I put at least a few casts through each before moving on. Eventually I reached the flat with a few boulders above. This is where my choice to leave the dry fly rod behind came back to bite me.
By this point in the session, the sun had come up just a bit. The water was beginning to warm, and I was seeing a few mayflies and lots of midges in the air. As I approached, the left 2/3 of the flat was in shade and the right 1/3 was in the sun. I saw a fish rise just into the shade. I switched one of my rods back to a delicate dry dropper with a size 20 dry and a two mm beaded nymph below. I made a cast to where I had seen the rise. Nothing. I kept covering the flat hoping for a fish to rise or take my nymph.
I saw another fish rise just into the shade a few feet further up the flat. This fish was definitely large enough to score. I covered this fish as well. When I placed the cast, I noticed that my sighter was glowing like a light saber a few feet above the water. I was using fairly muted sighter specifically to not be overly bright with the clear water. However, with the contrast of the shade and the sun on this run, it was amazing how bright it was compared to when it was in full sun. I immediately realized that I had likely put down both of the rising fish with this glowing overhead threat. I made a mental note to switch back to white leader material for the afternoon session, but I did not have time to sort it out now.
I finished fishing the flat. Disappointment was hanging in the back of my mind. I was confident that I could have caught one or both of those rising fish if I had just had my dry fly rod. That rod was sitting a 2-hour bus ride away though and there was nothing I could do about it now. I had to stay focused and keep fishing.
The bottom of the flat with the two rising fish. They rose just upstream of the boulders in the photo. This photo was taken before the session when the sun had not yet reached the water.
I fished quickly back through the pocketwater between the flat and the run above. I did not spend much time here knowing that there were not many obvious spots for a scoreable fish to hide.
I reached the run at the top of my beat. I only had 15 minutes left in the morning sub-session. I quickly worked a progression through it again. I did have one bump from a fish in the eddy on the far side. It seemed like a small fish though that would not have scored.
With a few minutes left I moved back to the remaining pockets. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a fish rise in the tailout at the very top of my beat. I quickly glanced at my watch. I had less than two minutes left. I ran to within range of the trout and quickly but gently knelt in place. I made one cast but the rig I had on with a 3.3 mm bead on the point was too heavy, even though the fish had risen in some water with depth and pace. I immediately cut off my point fly and reached for the first fly I saw with a 2.8 mm bead in my working box, a cinnamon colored perdigon.
I tied the new fly on. I had less than a minute left. I made one cast and amazingly the fish took the new fly on the first drift. I set the hook and yelled "FISH" to make sure my controller knew I had hooked it before time ran out. I landed what ended up being a 253 mm brown trout with less than 10 seconds left in the session. PHEWWW!! That was intense.
For the afternoon I moved to beat 30 on the upper section of the Vic. This beat looked very nice while I was scouting it. There were two deep bouldered pools at the bottom separated by steep pocketwater. The remainder upstream was mostly high gradient pocketwater but there were some nice deep pockets behind large boulders that looked enticing.
Fishing a pool near the bottom of my afternoon beat.
The afternoon session would be a long play by play to tell without much to share. I will cut to the chase on the main lesson I learned.
I fished hard all session through the various water types. I caught 11 separate fish that measured between 195-198 mm. I could not catch a single one that was just a few mm longer that would have met the 200 mm minimum size limit. Why couldn't one of these fish have eaten a couple stoneflies a week before!!??
However, perhaps the most maddening thing to me after the fact was that I had gotten away from my own style to try and match what I had thought I needed to do. I fished two nymphs where I felt one would have been better and I used more weight and shallower sighter angles than I would at home. These approaches worked well for Cody who has a different style than I do. With time and practice, I could probably have similar success with his style. But that's just it, I was not fishing with the style that has gotten me to where I am at in the first place.
To drive the point home, with about 40 minutes left in the session, I was fishing the heavy pockets in the last 1/3 of my beat. I broke a rig off in a tree and decided to swap to just fishing one fly. The water was complex here with small defined pockets. I felt I could be more accurate and have better drifts with just one fly in these pockets. I also knew I could stall them in the pockets with varied sighter angles to try and motivate reticent fish to eat.
Fishing under some trees near the top of my beat. This was where I switched to one fly and started fishing how I normally would approach similar water.
Of the 11 fish that I measured that were just a bit short, eight of them came in this last 40 minutes of the session. It was not just the switch to a single fly rig that made the difference because I also fished a two-fly rig where it still made sense. The change was settling into how I would normally fish instead of how I thought I needed to fish. In the end, none of the fish I caught with "my style" were long enough to measure. But the nagging thought in my head remains, "what if I had fished my way all along?" The answer to that question is one I will never know. These are the things as a competitor that keep you up at night.
I ended the session with the two fish I had caught in the morning. This score was only good enough for a 13th place in the session. I was really mad at myself afterward knowing that I had let my team down on a venue where we had done well in the previous sessions.
We had our worst session as a team overall in session four. Cody had a tough session on the Carlit Lakes finishing with one fish and a 20th place. I added 13 points to that tally. Mike Komara finished 16th on the Aude River. Luckily, Michael Bradley continued his great performance with a 2nd place on the Camporells Lakes with 15 fish and Jack Arnot won his session on the Tet River with 27 fish! At the end of the session. We were still in 3rd place as a team. Spain had opened a 15 point gap to second place and the Italians were nine points behind us. With one session left to go, the championship was nearing its close.
