The weather has been warming up over the last few days after a rather gloomy and far from beautiful month of July! At last, conditions are right for summer fishing!
The first large grasshoppers are out. I've been seeing them lately. They say grasshopper, but that's a misnomer, because even though they too come out more and more from the end of July, it's really the locusts that our pretty Breton trout are impatiently waiting for at this time of year. They are far more numerous.
Active, overexcited fish
As soon as I make my first casts, upstream of my parking area, a beautiful trout comes to pounce on my fly! A fish of nearly 30 cm that made two beautiful candles! What a delight! This lets me know that my strategy is right and that the trout are well turned out on these insects.
In three casts, I catch two trout. That's a good sign!
I only did this spot to test the fishing. I had in mind to go down the river and back up to my car.
So I head downstream and down into the meadow. Crickets are hopping all over the place. Great! I observe them as always to see their size and color. They've now reached adult size. Now they're ready to be used for fishing. Always a great moment in a fishing season. It's so much fun to do. In any case, I love this dynamic, intense fishing.
The fish are decidedly active, because, ditto, immediately on re-entering the river, two meadows down, I catch a few more trout. All sizes are out, but the pretty fish are still there.
Gobbling is rather noisy. They pounce on them as if they hadn't eaten for a few days, while their taut bellies betray a healthy and abundant diet. They weren't overly stressed and embarrassed like last year.
The powerful swirls and gobbles they produce are simply thrilling! What could give a fly fisher more pleasure than to see his flies swallowed whole? To see little grooves chasing your flies just before impact... Breton trout are pure stock and very combative for their size. With my little Sage Dart 7.6 and my Rio Creek 3 line, I'm having a lot of fun!
I started counting my trout right at the start of my session, which I do extremely rarely, as I'm not here to compete or set records. But sometimes when I feel that the fishing is going to be excellent, I do it, just to know how many trout I've been able to get up and catch. It's always surprising to see the density of fish in the Finistère rivers that I've been surveying for 23 seasons.
Fast fishing positions
Unlike conventional fishing, where you look for gobbles, it's not just about fishing positions, but also, and above all, about special outfits. Trout are indeed positioned differently when they are waiting for this highly seasonal food manna.
Edges are one of the key positions, even in very shallow water at times. It's surprising to find them at such shallow depths. But in fact, they colonize all positions where various terrestrial insects can be found in the water, be it under banks, low branches or various foliage. Those posted in the open water will not hesitate to jump on anything that moves.
Instead of trying to make beautiful casts and presentations, using imitations of locusts and grasshoppers, you should slap your flies. If possible, with precision to land directly on a trout's presumed position or even right on top of it.
Touches are often very quick, even instantaneous! You need to be constantly focused to succeed.
Change of tactics
In fishing, you must never lock yourself into a particular strategy or fly pattern. It's important to keep questioning yourself, and even to try other things, even if you catch fish. Sometimes, you'll find something even better!
In the middle of a fishing trip, a pretty fish gives me a refusal or a failed gobble. I reel it in but ditto, when I hook it, the fish isn't hooked, then it's impossible to get it interested again. I saw it was a nice trout. So I decide to offer her something else: a small beetle should make her fall for it at this time of year too, as it has to be said that hatchings are rare in the summer.
After two passes, my beetle imitation gently reeled in this splendid trout, which grew to around 30 cm. What a delight to have succeeded in thwarting its distrust.
I continue with this fly, but the rises are rarer. I reel in a grasshopper and immediately the catches start coming again.
Later, small red sedges in size 18 hatch. I also decide to test one of my favorite woodcock butt imitations. Many trout come to try it, but the size of this one has dropped significantly.
My favorite cricket catches a few more trout, including several in the 25/28 cm range, which is a good size for a river no more than 6 meters wide.
A really great session with 28 trout out, three or four unhooked, and several misses (yes, it happens, but it's often small fish that have trouble engaging the large fly).
But apart from the total number of catches, the most pleasing aspect is once again the violence of the bites and the ferocity of the Breton trout, as beautiful and acrobatic as ever!
