Scott Xanthoulakis at our VFFA June meeting
… a transcript of his presentation
First of all I’d like to thank Scott Raggatt and President Simon for inviting me, and all of you members for coming along today. So, thanks again. I’ve been running Wilderness Fly Fishing now for nine years. We’re a substantial business now, running trips mainly out of Marysville and right through the Snowy Mountains.
And that’s where my background is – the Snowy Mountains and the Khancoban area. I was taught to cast by Mike Spry, though unfortunately I didn’t get to spend any adult time with him, as he passed away.
But that was my introduction to fly fishing, and I started this guiding business nine years ago. We now offer trips to everywhere in Australia, including saltwater fly fishing, and then internationally to New Zealand, Kiribati, and now Montana. And we’re also looking at Mexico and Alaska.
What I’m talking about today is something that you’re all interested in – early season river fishing. I know it’s the closed season now, but in a couple of months the season opens again.
So how should we approach a river? As you’re aware, we’ve gone through the worst drought of 125 years or so. But fingers crossed we’re going to have high water when it reopens, so let’s talk about fish behaviour in early season, and methods and flies and where to fish.
If we understand the bugs and what the fish are doing, then we can catch fish. Early season cold water means that the fish have a slower metabolic rate, so they are moving slower through the water. They’re looking for things moving slowly, which means they’re not moving a lot to get to our flies. Generally in high flows the fish will be searching for cover just out of the fast water, and will most likely be feeding subsurface. But we can still catch fish at this time on dry flies, so it’s not just all nymph fishing. There’s a lot of subsurface feeding in the early season, though the fish are less likely to move to find food.
In Spring, when the water eventually warms up, the fish will move up to a metre to the left or to the right to take your fly. But in early season they won’t move even just three or four centimetres. So that means we need to do lots of repetitive casting in the same spot. When I’m guiding in places like the Goulburn River I’ve seen guys make two casts, then take 10 steps forward, then two more casts, … and then I just watch them disappear into the horizon.
On one occasion I had a client come back to me and say: “Scott, I’ve just fished that section … and I caught nothing.” And I said: “Well, just go back and fish the same water again”, because many anglers tend to fish too quickly. We need to do a lot of repetition. The fish are more likely to be in shallow water, as the warmest part of a river will be the shallow ripples, particularly where the sun can penetrate the water.
So think of ripple water less than knee deep. A lot of fish will be in that kind of water, particularly at this time of year and particularly in high rainbow trout population rivers such as the Taggerty. Sometimes in the Goulburn fish will congregate in certain areas and are happy to share the space, so you might find a lot of fish in a tight area.
This photo is of the upper Rubicon, a blue ribbon trout stream here in Victoria. As you can see it’s quite dirty and fast, and that’s the kind of water we’re expecting to find in early season.
I’ll show you a rod with some of the setups we use, which are the same as the setups we use in New Zealand’s South Island early in the season. It’s nymph fishing, and this gear is mainly what I head out to fish the Goulburn with.
The rod I have here is a 10 foot six weight, and this longer rod helps with things such as mending and reaching. One thing we’ve learned from competition angling is to fish shorter. So with the longer rod we can fish short, as our approach is to get closer to the fish. And a 10 footer works well on big waters like the Goulburn, and in New Zealand. So if you’re heading to New Zealand, or even the lakes in Tassie, get yourself a 10 footer. I prefer rods with a faster action to cast heavy nymphs. But if you already have a 9’6” rod it will be perfect for nymph under a dry, or for just dry fly.
Let’s talk about indicator nymph fishing. I usually have two rods with me when I’m guiding, and I always have one rod set up for indicator fishing. If you’re fishing a medium-sized stream like the Rubicon, you could certainly use your nine foot rod with a weight forward fly line and a 4x leader. I’ve got a 5x tippet here today, though we’re now leaning more towards 6x and even 7x. Recently Daniel Reed came from the world championships in France, and there they were using 10x to 12x – so super fine tippets.
Let’s explain why we use thinner diameter tippets when we’re nymph fishing. For indicator nymph fishing I’ve got here a big New Zealand strike indicator (large bit of wool yarn) and I’m not using a leader. That’s right – no leader! You don’t need a leader when you are nymph fishing. If you’ve got two big heavy nymphs on, they do the job for you.
Most modern fly lines come with a loop. Don’t ever cut that off. This section I have here is tied off the loop – just four feet of 2x tippet (roughly 10 pound), tied to a micro ring. Then I can drop off the micro ring a super fine tippet of 6x or 5x to the nymphs. So I’ve got two nymphs below the micro ring, sometimes eight to nine feet down below the indicator. I use fluorocarbon for this leader.
So we’ve got a giant indicator floating on the surface with two nymphs below it. Most fish early in the season are bunkered down feeding on nymphs, so we need to have the flies down where the fish are, and that’s close to the bottom.
Here’s a photo of somewhere on the Goulburn. In early season the fish are mainly feeding on tiny sizes 16 and 18 nymphs down deep. So how do we deliver these in six to eight feet of fast flowing water? We put a really heavy nymph on the top, and about 50 centimetres below that we tie in a tiny size 16 nymph. And 80% of the fish take that tiny nymph down deep, so that’s a way of delivering nymphs down where the fish are, because in the early season that’s what they’re feeding on.
So that’s the setup – the indicator, then a heavy nymph with little nymph off the back. You need to have the two nymphs close to each other – 40 centimetres or less, because you don’t want one nymph popping out to the side, as then the two nymphs will be in two different currents. You need them working in the same drift lines.
So that’s indicator nymphing, especially in big rivers like the Swampy or the Goulburn. I’ll run that rig 80% of the time, and then it’s nymph under a dry. So I take two rods with me running two different setups.
I also use fine tippet material. Why? Because it sinks quicker than thicker tippet material, which means our flies will head down faster to where the fish are near the bottom. We don’t want to use bombs that behave unnaturally in the water. Fine tippets allow our flies to move more naturally. And we can use lighter nymphs and get the same result. Thintippets cut the water better. I use fluorocarbon, unless it’s 8x or 7x, and then I go back to using monofilament.
Obviously, and especially in New Zealand in their very clear water, you need to use a white indicator, as you want to be able to detect the take. One of the biggest faults we see is anglers missing fish because they just didn’t see the take. Then often we wonder what colour the indicator should be to avoid it being detected. In places like New Zealand, or even at Millbrook in the clear settings there, the fish can be a bit wary, so then you go a bit smaller.
One thing we teach is European Nymphing, which is a form of competitive fly fishing. Let me say there’s nothing like fly casting. I love casting – those beautiful loops when we’re casting a fly line. We teach it, and we love it.
In a big river like the Swampy I like to put out really long casts and get long drifts. Long casts in a big river allows our nymphs to get down where the fish are for longer periods of time. It’s rewarding to be able to cast long with heavy nymphs, because you will catch more fish in these big rivers if your nymphs are travelling where the fish are.
I like indicator fishing, but in European Nymphing there’s no direct connection to an indicator. You are completely out of contact. And if you’re fishing with two nymphs at a distance with deliberate slack created through mending to allow a good natural drift, you’re only catching the fish that go “whoop” and pull your indicator down. Who knows how many other fish we miss – fish that have eaten our fly and said, “No, that’s not food” but haven’t moved the indicator much. Perhaps a lot!
We go to Geelong Grammar and take the Year 10 Grammar kids out fly fishing. We will have 20 kids in a room, and I’ll say, “What’s the most important thing about fly fishing?” They’ll respond with things like, “Getting out into nature.” But there’s always one kid who says: “Just having fun.” And I say: “That’s it!”
That’s why we all took up fly fishing – just to have fun. It’s an enjoyable sport. So get back to having fun and enjoy your fishing in whatever you’re doing.
If you want to catch heaps of fish it’s always good to have European Nymphing as a technique up your sleeve. Let’s say you’re three hours into your day and you haven’t got a fish. It’s good then to be able to go and retrieve the nymphing rod and catch some fish. The Belgian cast? The Belgian cast is an open loop constant tension cast, and this cast over the top is what you need to cast your nymph setup, with your elbow coming through in a circular motion keeping big wide loops. I watched Mike Spry casting on grass and tried to mimic him because I was sick of getting tangles. So I ended up doing a Belgian cast without realising that’s what it was called.
European Nymphing is an important technique in early season is, because it really does catch a lot of fish and is the best way to deliver nymphs. But this is another discussion for another time.
Daniel came back from France and said, “We’ve got to do our dry fly nymph fishing with this setup differently. We’ve got to use curve casts now.” So it’s evolving, and it’s something you should learn for early season fishing. It uses super light tippet and lightly weighted flies. We always talk ‘dead drift, but we do a lot of swinging and animating of our flies, and moving our nymphs around in the water. It’s a great technique for early season.
A lot of people when they come out with me say: “Whoa. You use that long dropper?” You’ll regularly find me using four or five or even six feet of dropper under the dry fly, because I don’t want the dry fly acting like a bubble float with the nymph hanging 90 degrees under it, because it will drag and you will miss the eats on the fly. So you don’t want your dry fly acting like a bubble float. And keeping them straight allows you to also have a long drop. You can use, say, a 3.5 mm tungsten bead, and then you can go without having to change your distance, as you’d rather be just changing your fly rather than changing your length.
We’ve seen a big change in our posts. We’re now using polypropylene and High Vis. In early season I tend to use very large dry flies if I’m not expecting to get a fish on it, just so I can see the nymph get taken.
But dry fly fishing, especially in early season on the Goulburn River, is fantastic, and that’s with small dry flies. Fish are sipping on the surface, so you don’t want to use a big dry fly on somewhere like the Goulburn when they’re feeding on size 20 duns.
Another technique which you should know about in the early season is swinging flies. I guess what comes to mind straight away when we talk about swinging flies is using a sinking line and streamers or Woolly Bugger-style flies. We rarely swing Buggers or large flies now, as we mainly swing caddis pupa, nymphs, and smaller soft hackle wets.
There’s a book called C addis f lies by Gary LaFontaine. If you haven’t read this book then you need to read it. It’s one of those books you should flick through to understand caddis, because trout feed on a lot of caddis.
In fishing these wets we’re using really strong tippet, a weight forward floating line, and a single fly. I’m using a single caddis pupa or a single nymph (very rarely two nymphs), and we’re casting across and letting it sweep. Remember the fish you’re swinging to are coming up behind the fly, so they hit hard and they’ll break off any finer tippets.
So we need strong tippets and a single fly. Particularly in the early season we use bead heads and bead-head nymphs with fluorescent beads. We also fish dark coloured flies when it’s really dirty. We also swing pupa in clear water. And little flashy nymphs are great too.
Andrew came out on the Goulburn with us recently, and we were upstream nymphing. I told Andrew that when the line is going back behind you it’s going to drag, so we let the flies swing until the line is straight behind us. What it was mimicking was something moving sideways. And that’s why Gary Lafontaine’s book was life changing for me, because caddis move sideways in the water right when they pupate.
There are a few mayfly that swing, such as the Kosciusko dun. And swinging nymphs work just as well sometimes as a caddis pupa. If you read Gary Lafontaine’s book, he suggests ‘it sparks’, so I always put a kind of UV sparkle on my nymphs, and I think the fish are keyed in on that sparkle or that shimmer, because that’s what the naturals do. When the water gets really dirty they form a gaseous sack around themselves, and that air bubble on the caddis shimmers in the light. The trout see that shimmer, and they go for it.
When we’re swinging in slightly heavy water and your caddis nymph is directly behind, I give three long strips as well. Fish will move up to six metres to chase your fly when it’s swinging, so swing your flies, especially in the riffles early in the season because the Goulburn is a great river to fish these methods in the early season.
Dun Stuff
Like I said, a lot of fish are caught subsurface. All my nymphs have tungsten beads except some unweighted stuff for when they’re rising. That one down at the bottom is my Squirmy Worm. Around Marysville in early season worms are in the gutters everywhere.
And they are a really important food source. But they’ve banned in competition because they are illegal. They don’t work anywhere near as well in tailwaters. They also work ten times more effectively when there are a lot of rainbows around in the Goulburn, but they rarely work in the Stevenson or Rubicon or lower Mitta Mitta.
I’ve got a mate who was the creator of the first Squirmy Worm. He used a red elastic rubber band, and just about every fish would eat it.
What common theme are you seeing in my box of nymphs? Yes, red and brightness. Metallic pink beads are my thing. So tie your flies with a pink bead. I don’t know why, so don’t ask me. So metallic pink beads are the go. That Duracell nymph up the top of my box is absolutely deadly, especially on brown trout in rivers.
So you’ll see a lot of different colours in my nymph box, with sizes 12 through to 18, and generally all the bead sizes will match the hook sizes. However Daniel’s nymph boxes have just four patterns. That’s all. But he’s got a huge range of bead sizes and colours, and the trend is for size 16 nymphs – in other words tiny flies.
You can see a hi-vis Paradun there, and if anyone’s been guiding with me on the small rivers you would have used one of them. The PMX is by far my favourite Stimulator pattern. It catches a lot of fish. And these smaller flies, like the CDC Emergers, F-Flies, and CDC Duns in size 20s are mainly for the Goulburn and tail waters, catching low water sippers.
When I’m actually fishing to rising fish, it’s small flies and I’m probably leaning towards even smaller. But this is the fly you must have in the summer months to fish in the ripples. You don’t want to be fishing in a 30 degree day in summer, but as soon as the sun gets off the water, start swinging this fly in the riffles even before the fish start rising. It’s going to catch a lot of fish. Stick in the riffles, because that’s where the first hatch will happen – in the riffles where the water is just knee deep.
This photo is of dirty water, big swinging stuff, particularly late in the season when the fish are aggressive. Many are moving into spawning mode, so we’ll start swinging those big flies. We use large articulated flies like the Sex Dungeon, big articulated flies. The flies we use are black with fluorescent beads for use in murky water.
Now many of you will have fly boxes filled with the old wets, like Zulus and Mrs Simpsons. But the fish’s brains haven’t got any bigger, so I guess these old wets will still work. However, I guess with somewhere like the Goulburn River the fish see a lot of flies. I’ve arrived at the Thornton Bridge and seen six cars parked there, but on evening when they’re rising there will be a fish rising every ten yards, and they have been there right through the day, too.
In general fishing, but particularly in the high river season, I would be fishing mainly off the edge of a seam, and I’ll start with a nymph under a dry. Early season, when metabolic rates are low, I’ll fish along the slightly slower edges. You will find fish in the tail outs too. I always say put your fly in the best spot first, and then fish around that. Your first cast is the most important cast. You should think the same way even if you can’t see the fish, but you will find a lot of fish in that slow seam stuff early in the season. When it’s high water, the slow part of any rivers is on the inside bends, whether you’re in Montana or New Zealand.
When fishing the Goulburn and it’s running at say 3,500 Megalitres per day, the first question I ask an angler is: “What hand do you cast with?” If they say, “My right hand”, I will fish the north side, because it’s inside bends then for a right hander. On a small river you can just cross over, but for somewhere like the Goulburn you’re stuck on the north side, so just be aware that if it’s flowing at 3,500 you’re going to fish a lot of inside bends. So go and fish the side of the river that’s going to have the most inside bends for you. And find clear water if you can.
I wait until December before I head up into the mountains, because it’s colder in the mountains, so there can often be better fishing in the lower farmland kinds of areas where you have got a lot of sun penetrating the water and thus warming it.
Look at the dirty water in this early season photo. Again, fish it repetitively, and don’t stop. Just repeat your cast into the front of those fish. And like the competition anglers, use longer rods and fish shorter. Use your reach. You don’t have to worry much about mending. You can use a long rod even on small streams.
All those competition guys are fishing small streams with 9’6” rods, because then you get to keep away from the fish and thus catch more. Also look out for feeder streams, and for anything coming in that’s clear. These photos are all of steams near Marysville. You don’t want to fish any raging water. Fish where it’s really soft.
If anyone’s been out with me they know that “the foam is home”. So your first cast is always going to be in this foam line. It’s kind of slow water in the early season, so just be smart and put the fly where the food is.
If rivers are flowing high in the early season from snow melt, then the tail water is your best fishing. Generally, all of our big fish are caught at both ends of the season. It’s a great time to get out and catch big fish.
In regard to cormorants I always say: “He’s feeding to keep himself alive, and we’re just fishing for fun. So he’s always going to out fish us.”
This season my job is to keep fishing. I don’t care if the cormorants are there. I’m not going to tell everyone not to come fishing because there are cormorants. We’ve just had four great years with probably the best fishing I’ve seen in the last 25 years of watching, and in the last four years we’ve been regularly getting 20 to 30 fish, and sometimes up to 100 fish in some of the small streams.
But this year the cormorants have appeared again, and they hammered the rivers. Tasmania has had a tougher season than average, and likewise right through the Snowy Mountains. None of our fishing areas that we guide on have been excluded. But we’ve still had good fishing. Yes, it’s been harder, and the fish numbers aren’t as great. Next season is likely to be tough, but you will still catch fish. So don’t worry about the cormorants. When you go out fishing areas that are shallow, and we found a lot of fish in the shallow waters, though obviously in among stream habitat. If cormorants are going to come into that kind of environment, they need to swim, so the fish just go into the habitat where the cormorants can’t go.
I’ve got a good mate who guides up in north-east Victoria, and we’ve been on the phone to each other regularly. And we both agreed that in the rivers that were giving us 60 to 70 fish each trip we now can’t get one or two fish out of. And we also agreed that they were high rainbow trout population rivers. With a drift boat on the lower Tumut we would catch 50 fish in a day. But now I’ve got a young guide up there who was blanking on days because the birds are starting there. The birds have gone to the highly populated rivers. But when I see eight or nine cars at Thornton bridge, I say: “Beaut – cormorant scarers!” “Cormorant crows” we call them. They’re banging lures out and … there’s no cormorants there! We love ‘Cormorant Scarers’, as we call them, or guys who can’t fish all that well. And campsites, too, where there are kids running around. So just fish where there is a lot of human activity. Fish under the bridges too.
I fished the upper Murray round Tom Grogan recently. I walked three or four kilometres into the back country and saw horses running around. It was a good experience, but we caught stuff all fish. Then we went to the campsite – and caught 20. Human activity is where the cormorants aren’t.
There’s no better time than now to try to catch other species. We do trips up to the lodge at Khancoban, and on occasions we’ve had tough fishing there. But a lot of guys have never caught a Murray cod on a fly, so we say: “Guys, I know you booked a trout trip, but it’s not great. Do you want to catch a Murray cod on a fly? We’ve got 10 weight rods here, and we’ve got all the gear you need. Do you want to go through with it?” And then we’re catching cod in trout waters.
Our waters are warming up, so cod are spreading rapidly to where there used to be trout. We fished clear water in a river that was 20 to 30 foot wide, and we caught a cod almost a metre long. In that kind of water it’s really exciting.
In a tough trout season we need to think outside the box a little. A guy called Dennis comes out with us on occasions, and we mentioned to him that we were going carp fishing. He wasn’t keen and swore a lot, so we said we would give it a go for just ten minutes, and then would head off to a nearby trout stream. Four and a half hours later – ten carp caught, and all sight fishing. So we need to look at other species, like bream in the Fitzroy River on the south-west coast. Here in Victoria when you’re having a tough trout season, bream are a great alternative.
We operate trips to New Zealand, Montana, and Christmas Island, and there is no better time in the next 12 months to get away from a tough trout season than to go to New Zealand. And they haven’t had cormorants!
We have operated trips to Southland now for eight years and were based at Lumsden, but unfortunately we’re now seeing a slow degradation in environmental factors, and angling pressure has increased. And now you have to pay a daily license fee to fish designated waters and you’re limited to just five days for the season.
I was starting to get the feeling, too, that some of the guides we were using didn’t really want us there. So it’s good now that we can offer trips to Argentina with similar or better fishing. They cost a bit more, but there’s very little angling pressure there.
Recently some other guides suggested that we start going to Canterbury in New Zealand. No designated waters there, and it seemed there was less angling pressure. Lots more spring creek fishing to enjoy, especially around the Lumsden area. One creek we came across was full of fish, and there was so much great fishing in that area that it blew my mind. The majority of the fish are brown trout in the late season, but early season and throughout the season there are also rainbow rivers.
New Zealand Fisheries have done a fantastic job. They’ve set up more beats and better access. It’s spot on. For me it was exciting to move to Canterbury and have a change of scenery. We’re now in a place called Fairlie, so we do a lot of fishing at Twizel. We offer premium trips to a place called Kiribati on Christmas Island. Some of you may have fished there as well. It’s all about catching bonefish, GTs, and triggerfish. If you enjoy sight fishing the western lakes of Tasmania, you will love flats fishing at Kiribati. It’s similar to Tassie except that the fish are turbocharged.
I just love sight fishing, and as Andrew knows, when we go to New Zealand there’s nothing better than sight fishing for me. We’re just walking until we see our target. We’re not fishing to it, and that’s what ticks a lot of boxes for me this time – sight fishing and hunting.
And it’s a great fishery. You can go there as a beginner and catch fish, or if you go there as an experienced angler and catch lots of fish.