Fly Fishing Dirty Water

As I write this it’s persisting down outside.What’s for sure is it suddenly is feeling like winter is setting in. I’m planning a fair bit of fishing over the next few weeks and all I can think of is how I’m going to need to get myself out of summer dry fly mode into getting down and dirty winter mode.

A nice brown trout pulled from dirty water

At this time of the year one of the things I make sure I always have on hand is a fast sinking line (or at least a 10’ Ex Super Fast Polyleader) and a bunch of woolly buggers for when the rivers come up in flood.

Looking at big brown flowing rivers is often off putting as the first thing that comes to mind is how am I going to get fish out of the middle of that. When in fact you’re quite right you’re not going to catch anything out of the middle of a big swollen river, it doesn’t mean that you won’t find fish along the edges of these rivers as the move into quiet water to get away from the flows; here’s a few tips to catching these fish.

The Tongariro River in high flows, the fish haven't dissapeared they just require a fresh approach

1.Don’t be tempted to cast to far, stay focussed on the edge of the river. (ie 1-5 m off the bank).
2.Make sure you control your swing and/or drift in swirly currents along the river edge so the fly doesn’t move too quickly or un-naturally.
3.Try swinging a wetfly under an undercut bank or overhanging branch, often swollen rivers open up new exposed area’s which trout slide into.
4.You could also try a nymph under an indicator, don’t be scared of keeping the leader quite short and work on controlling the drift and taking your time to let an potential fish find your fly.

A winter sunrise in the misty lower Waikato