Yay – you made it to another season – today is the first day of the 2011 trout season.
Congratulations on making it this far – we all deserve a great big round of applause for fighting through yet another thoroughly miserable winter.
From this moment on instead of being totally unable to legally fish for trout we can now choose not to fish for them as the conditions are totally against us. We can now look out the window and shake our heads in woe at the dismal temperatures which is going to be keeping the trout comatose at the bottom of the river. Consequently the possibility of catching a trout on the dry fly is incredibly slim – by slim I mean none. There was a time I would have taken the day off work just to head down to the river to have a symbolic cast however I have been stung that way before – and by stung I mean froze my booty in freezing cold miserable water. You see the hope at this time of year is that you would see the mythical Large Dark Olive hatch – they are the main insects you should see flirting around the water with the trout greedily gulping them down. The hatch usually starts in February and peak in March and April – however, personally at the start of the season I rarely see them and when I do they sail down the river are totally unmolested by the trout – of course I might actually be in a place totally devoid of trout which is why this year I will be totally sacking my usual early season haunt and tackling some fresh water upstream. Technically the hatch should be either side of the hottest part of the day – people say noon however to me that never makes sense – going by my temps the hottest part of the day is usually mid afternoon or a little earlier, say 1pm – 2pm.
Still, its not all that bad – give it another couple of weeks and hopefully the temperatures will be up a bit – It is a funny time of year when a week really does make a difference. I always think Autumn slips into Winter a heck of a lot quicker than Winter slips into Spring. The real date that we should all take notice is the 1st April – we should have a bit more sunlight and hopefully some steady temps above 10 degrees. Today we will have an astounding 11hours 46minutes and 14 seconds of daylight whereas on the 1st April we will have a whopping 13 hours 5 minutes and 21 seconds of daylight.
Whee!
Temperatures are crap.
Seems that the coast trout are holding back a bit here as well, due to the temperatures. Adding to that, there’s a spurt of growth in some kind of algae (Chattonella) resulting in the trout keeping a distance to the coast (the water looks brown and muddy) and it’s reckoned that it may even effect the population of garfish later in the spring. All because of the weather conditions and seemingly also an increase in water pollution from the agriculture industry.
I sure hope that won’t be the case, as garfish on the fly is great entertainment when the trout are holding back.
I suppose a bit of time in the forest splitting wood will have to function as a pastime instead.