 2009 PROTEA TRIALS —Young guns challenge the old dogs — by Gareth George
FINDING suitable water to test the skills of our country’s top flyfishers is no easy task. There is, after all, no point in putting this bunch on a pond full of freshly stocked fish, for as contradictory as it might sound, at this level it’s not about the quantity of fish you can catch in one weekend.
Over the last two years, through provincial and then national competitions, these flyfishers have proven their ability to net more than their fair share of fish and have earned a ranking that has warranted their invitation to compete for national honours.
SCOTLAND IN SOUTH AFRICA?
So, the 2009 Sybase Protea Trials had to be held on waters that provided challenging fishing for feral fish to mimic as best we could in South Africa what they might face in Scotland at this years World Fly Fishing Championships and Commonwealth Games. The weather gods were paying close attention as they concocted a mixture of blustering wind and driving rain, occasionally broken by a glimpse of sun that had every angler expecting to see kilt-clad gillies patrolling the banks.
Selecting two types of waters from the WildFly stable in the Natal Midlands in terms of nutrient levels and stocking profile, the format was to have every angler fishing the same water, rotating in four three-hour sessions over two days.
At this year’s World Championships there will be four sessions of drift-boat loch fishing and only one river session, so it was decided that drift-boat skills were of paramount importance. We are fortunate to have a wealth of stream and river specialists in South Africa, but as drift-boat fishing is almost unheard of and very rarely practised in our country, the focus of the trials turned to this difficult discipline.
Aside from the stringent rules which apply to leader length, fly construction and rigging, now the anglers had to contend with a new set of limiting criteria. There would be two flyfishers per boat, and the boat had to be self-/hand-propelled, with no anchor … only a drogue to adjust your drift speed. And if you stood up to do anything but land your fish, you were disqualified.
The cardinal, character testing rule for drift-boat fishing is that you have to cast with the wind, so you cannot troll off the back of the boat. For most of the anglers it was going to be an uncomfortable three-hour battle against a 15-knot northwesterly.
Now imagine, you break your back paddling to the top of the lake, set your drogue and then, just as you get your fly wet, you’re having to contend with your boat drifting over your line, forcing a recast. With all this to contend with, selection of line and fly sink rates proved to be crucial.
You obviously cannot at any time be anchored or stationary within a few metres of the shore, so an inordinate amount of time is also spent moving from point A to B, hence selecting a drift line that gives you the most time with your fly in the water is critical
Read the full story in the June/July issue of FLYFISHING.
|
|
