The ultimate classic fly

Yesterday I got up early and headed south to catch up with Milo, my trout guide mate of many many years. The mission was to introduce him to hydro lake fishing, and see what we could rattle up. We met at Matamata at 8.30 and by 9.45 were on the water and heading up the lake. Milo rigged up with a sink tip and tied on a Parson's Glory - a real NZ classic smelt fly, teamed with one of my small Woolly Buggers.

Inwardly I had doubts about the fly choice, having never needed to use anything but a Bugger derivative I knew his Parson's wouldn't get touched. The Buggers that TT and I use incorporate hot beads, UV straggle, UV flash, barred marabou... all the modern goodies. The lake is full of oxygen weed and when sun gets on the water the damsel fly nymphs come to life and so do the fish.

The sun was trying hard to get through the cloud and the wind was gusting NW, but I wasn't concerned as the forecast called for the clouds to depart in the afternoon. We moved into the shallows, struggling with spotting conditions as the cloud obscured the view through the surface film. We spooked several fish before Milo hit one - on the Parsons Glory. I thought "yeah OK, maybe it was a bit misguided.." and soon after hooked upon one of my buggers. After that though, it all got a bit sad for me. As Milo hooked fish regularly, I just couldn't get a take, and yep, they were eating the smelt fly. I should have taken the blinkers off... it wasn't until we headed up to a feeder stream and saw a small trout working over a school of smelt that the penny really dropped for me (god I'm slow...) and so I borrowed one from Milo. We then sat on a weed bank over a deep channel and caught quite a few fish rather quickly. Nothing huge, but just good brownies and bows in the 2 -4 lb range.

We pulled out at 4, by now the cloud had burnt off substantially, the bugs were working and we'd had a pretty good day. And as Milo said (after 11 solid day's guiding) "It was nice to have a day off, do something different and actually get to hold the rod!"... a guide's perspective I suppose.