9-29-24 Fly Comp #4
This was my third Sunday in a row where I participated in a fly fishing competition. I left my house Saturday night and began the 4 hour drive to the Little Juniata River. My friend Dave allowed me to stay at his camper, so I spent the night there. I haven’t fished the Little J in a long time and have never been on this particular section where the competition was taking place. The meeting started at 6:30am and I found out that I drew the second session which meant I would be controlling another angler during the first session. I preferred this because I could get a good look at the water and come up with a game plan before fishing. While I was controlling the first session, I spent a few seconds flipping rocks and looking at bugs to get an idea of what to start with. I noticed a lot of dark nymphs under the rocks so I had a plan to start with a black perdigon.
I walked my beat and noticed there were a few nice areas with a lot of dead water in between. I set up a 6x sighter with 7x tippet to start the day. I began at the bottom of the beat and got into a pretty nice groove, had 7 fish in fairly short order, all of which were on the black perdigon. It seemed that fish were in all the different water types, I was catching them in the slow flat water outside of the current as well as the middle of the main current and everything in between. Because of this, I started fishing pretty thoroughly, trying to get a drift in any decent looking spots. I was able to hook a few more fish and lost a couple as well. There was a steady rain all day, so I had the sighter sticking to my rod a lot, which kept me fishing pretty close. I noticed a lot of other anglers had mono wrapped around the rod to help minimize the sticking, something I’ll have to try in the future.
The fish were taking flies very fast, so a few times I had aggressive hooksets and immediately broke off the 7x. I worked my way upstream into a section that looked really good, I was able to land two more fish fairly quickly before I had a major failure. Somehow, the microloop at the end of my fly line broke, so I didn’t really have a great way to attach my leader to the fly line. After about 15 minutes of panic, I managed to get a half assed nail knot to hold and continue fishing. Going forward, I will likely set up a back up nymphing rod in competitions to avoid wasting so much time. With 15 minutes left, I quickly got to the top of my beat where there was a deep run and started fishing the tail out. First cast I had a take and set the hook a little late, I still hooked the fish but it came off during the fight, sending my flies directly into a tree above me. I pulled them out of that tree only to have them fly directly into another tree! At that point, my leader broke as I tried to get them out so I was stuck tying on some new tippet. I quickly cast into the same spot and managed to hook and land another brown. With 5 minutes left, I kept working that water and managed to lose 4 more fish! Not a strong ending for me and I finished with 11. That ended up getting me third for that session.
Similar to the prior competition, I controlled an angler that was using a green mop fly. Again, to my surprise, the fish were just crushing that fly. Going into my session, I decided I would start with my black perdigon because it was working, I also went up in sighter and tippet size. On my very first cast I landed a brown trout and then missed another one shortly after. It was a pretty deep hole, so I tried jigging a streamer only to connect on a bass. About 13 minutes went by and I decided to give this green mop a try. First cast, I missed a fish in a spot that I just fished my perdigon to no avail. I casted again and landed one, first fish on a mop fly. I couldn’t believe it. For the next 50 minutes, I never moved an inch and landed 18 more trout!
At this point, I am a firm believer in the mop fly. I don’t know why the fish eat it, especially these wild and heavily pressured brown trout, but the damn thing works! Going back to my main reason to start fishing competitions, which was to learn, I can definitely say I’ve learned to keep an open mind about flies. Only took me a few competitions to finally try it, but I’m glad I did. I went about 20 minutes without a fish and that’s when I realized my fly had fouled up and also wrapped around the tippet. I quickly fixed the fly and boom, fish on again. Ended the session with 26 fish landed out of 32 hook ups.
I’m still a little bit in disbelief with how well that fly worked and how it seemed to eliminate the need for perfect presentations and drag free drifts. I kind of wish it didn’t work so well! Either way, its a new tool in the toolbox. I ended the competition with 37 trout, which got me in fourth place which I’m happy with. For not having much experience in competitive fishing, I finished my 3 competitions with 2 third places and a fourth, which I’m very happy about. I met some great people and definitely came out of that as a more confident angler with a few new tricks to try when I’m out fishing. For anyone trying to get their angling to another level, or interested in trying a competition, I definitely recommend it. It’s not nearly as intimidating as I originally thought it would be.