1-21-24 First Fly Comp
I’ve always found that a little competition helped drive me to push harder than I normally would, regardless of what I was competing in. When I found out there were fly fishing competitions, I’ve always been intrigued to try, but a little intimidated by the process of signing up and trying to figure out all the rules. All that being said, I finally decided to give it a try and knew this would be a great way to watch some excellent anglers and try to learn some new tactics through observation.
The biggest change under competition rules for me has to do with leader length. The leader can only be twice as long as your rod, which was going to be a big change for me. My typical set up on my euro rod is a spool of 4 or 5x sighter to my tippet. I enjoy the simplicity of this set up and I never have to worry about any knots getting caught in my guides. In addition, if anything broke on my leader all I had to do was add some more tippet and I was back in the game.
My first go at a competition legal set up was a nail knot connecting my sighter to the euro fly line, but this was extremely inefficient. The line would constantly get stuck in the guides at the nail knot. I watched a video from Devin Olsen on making a micro loop with the braid core euro line and gave that a try the day before the competition. What a difference, the line moved in and out of the guides and I never had a single issue. If I’m forced to use competition rules, that will definitely be the way I set it up going forward.
During my practice session the day before the competition, I had a lot of success in the slack water near the bank floating my sighter with a scud pattern. I only had a few hours to fish before sunset but was able to land 8 fish before dark in the 18 degree weather. I was feeling confident going into the next day.
My first beat started at 10:15AM and it looked to have some great water. The person who fished it before me was able to land 2 fish so at least I had an idea of what to expect. I’m not sure why, but about 10 minutes before it started, I felt pretty nervous and was not able to relax. I started fishing and was very tense, about 5 minutes in, I landed my first fish on a perdigon. I felt good about that start and continued to work through the water with different flies. I wasn’t able to move another fish in that section so I started to work upstream. I got to a section with a large rock that had a deep current break behind it, I tucked my rig right behind the rock and was able to pull in another fish.
At this point i’m feeling pretty good and had a large section of slack water up ahead. Most of the time, I wouldn’t like fishing this type of water, but in the winter, I felt like it was a great place for fish to hold. I had a scud on my point the perdigon as my tag fly, I like doing this in the winter because I feel the perdigon will pull both of my flies into the lower third of the water. As I floated the sighter upstream of me, I noticed a slight hesitation and set the hook. A small trout went flying through the air and I wasn’t able to get it under control to net it. Lost that fish to a heavy hookset which was pretty much my nerves and tension going through the rod.
About 3 casts later I had another take and set the hook into a trout before I felt the line snap. Another lost opportunity, after inspecting my rig, the line snapped well above the fly, likely a knot that I never even checked. In regular fishing, it’s not a big deal, in a competition, every fish is important. At this point there were 30 minutes left in the beat and I had a lot of water to cover. I started moving quickly and working every spot that looked like it might hold a fish. With about 10 minutes left, I had another fish take the scud and sent him through the air on the hookset again, but this time it stayed on the line. As it dangled in the air in front of me, I reached behind me to get my net and it took too long, the trout hit the water in front of me before I could scoop it. After I great start, I really struggled to convert fish hooked into fish netted, my final count was 2 for 6 in that beat, which wasn’t spectacular but would have made a big difference.
The second beat started at 3:15 and this time I went in very relaxed and my mindset was to just have fun. I fished as well as I could, covered a ton of great water and never moved a fish for the first hour and 10 minutes. With 20 minutes left, I started jigging a streamer and finally hooked into a pretty decent fish. As I moved it toward the bank and got it close to the net, I realized it was a sucker! I started laughing and couldn’t believe it, the fish was even hooked in the mouth. My controller told me there was 5 minutes left and for whatever reason I decided to switch to an egg fly, that was a game changer but a little too late. I hooked and landed 2 trout right at the buzzer.
That was it, first comp in the books and not where I wanted to finish, but I definitely learned quite a few things. My biggest takeaways were the following: 1) fish relaxed and have fun, 2) If it’s not working, make a change, 3) set up as efficient as possible, especially with the net.
All in all, it was a great experience and I think I had just enough fun to try another one.