With my first World Fly Fishing Championships done and in the books, I figured I would take the time to do a short write up of each of my sessions. I’m going to try and break it down as much as I can, so this will be the first of a five part series on my experience. This year the sessions were broken up into two parts (pegs) for the rivers, and for on the lakes. That may make these recaps hard to follow, but I’ll do my best to make everything flow. Sadly, I was so caught up in the fishing that I neglected to take many good pictures, so you’ll have to bear with me there as well.

This year’s championships were based in Font-Romeu, France, with venues spread across the eastern Pyrenees. We fished three rivers: the Têt, Aude, and Vicdessos; as well as two lakes: the Carlits and the Camporalis. The lake venues actually consisted of several alpine lakes situated close together, which is a first for a World Championships. These were some incredibly difficult venues, with clear water and picky, spooky fish. Every venue had plenty of medditeranian brown trout (Zebra trout), as well as sparse populations of rainbow trout in a few venues and grayling in the Aude river. 

Our practice for this championships was severely hindered by a lack of water. There was nothing representative on any of the river venues, and just a few adjacent lakes to practice for the lake venues. We were able to find a few rivers in the area similar enough to provide some decent practice as well, but these are never as good as the real thing. To make it even harder, what practice water we could find was heavily pressured by all the other teams. On one river we caught nearly thirty fish a piece early in the week, but only five or so a few days later after the other countries fished it. Despite this, we still managed to pull some good information together before the competition started. As our practice drew to an end, we moved into our final prep day feeling relatively ready.

With the way the competition was set up this year, we had access to our group and venue assignments fairly early on our final prep day. I was lucky enough to draw the Carlit Lakes first, which was the venue we had gotten the best practice on the week prior. We fished a lake at similar elevation not far away, and figured out a decent program consisting of throwing dries near the bank and crawling small, light nymphs. On top of that, our team captain Glade Gunther would be accompanying me to assist in figuring out these finicky fish. It was going to be tough fishing, but I knew at least a few anglers would make it to the teens if not higher.

Since there were only two anglers fishing the lakes each day, our team planned on sharing a lot of the necessary lake gear and flies. Everyone had spent a few hours filling a working box for each lake with a few confidence patterns, so I spent the rest of the day adding any other flies I wanted and getting the gear together. To save some time rigging the next morning, I decided to set my rods all the way up that night. I went with a four weight rigged for close quarters dry fishing, a five set up for single dry if the wind picked up, a five set up with two small nymphs on a floating line for crawling, a five with a midge tip and the same two nymphs for deeper crawling, and a six set up with a fast glass for pulling lures in case nothing else was working.

I set these up broken in half and packed them in braided rod sleeves, then secured everything together with velcro straps. Carrying things like this was a little nerve wracking, but I figured it would be worth the risk for extra scouting time. Outside of that I packed pretty light to save weight for the hike. I was going to fish out of my regular chest pack for these lakes because of the long beats, which would make it hard to run back and forth to a bank bag and net. I loaded that with boxes and a few accessories, and then brought a small backpack for extra spools, flies, and snacks.

The next morning Glade and I were on the bus by five thirty. When we were underway, the sector judge got up and announce the draw. I was one of the first names called, meaning I was starting on the highest lake. I had no idea if this was a good or bad lake, but I did know that it was a solid hour hike up the mountain, which could have been better. When we got to the parking lot, I met up with my controller and we set off for the trail. It was a beautiful area, but pretty tough hiking with a lot of elevation gain. Fifty minutes later we arrived at my first peg, which left me with just over an hour to scout and prepare.

This peg was shaped like a large J, with an inlet/outlet complex near the bend. The majority of it was enclosed by steep, rocky banks, with about twenty five yards of more open bank at the top. As I put my rods together and got them strapped into a rod carrier, Glade walked the far side of the peg to see if it was worth starting there. Unlike the other lakes we had passed, this one was mostly devoid of rising fish making their positions obvious. From high on the rocks he was able to mark a few fish eating nymphs up in the column where the cliff ended. With no other areas calling my name, I figured I better run over there.

I was going to start by crawling nymphs high in the column from the more open bank near the beat flag, then work over to the feeding fish Glade marked. I set up about ten feet back from the bank, nymphing rod in hand, and waited for the buzzer to sound. About fifty seconds before my session started, a scorable fish decided to swim over and start picking off small midges a foot from the bank right in front of me. I slowly crawled back to my rod carrier and grabbed my four weight dry rod, which was set up with an eighteen foot leader ending in 6.5x Trouthunter tippet and a #16 beetle. I got reset just as the controller said go and made a good first cast to the fish, which was promptly refused. It continued rising, so I pulled my fly in and switched it to a smaller parachute ant as fast as I could with nervous hands. I made another cast to the fish, which strolled over and slowly sipped my offering. I set the hook with the right amount of power, but heard a light snap and watched the fish dart away. Evidently the tippet knot I’d tied the night prior wasn’t as good as I thought it was, which was certainly a rough thing to figure out during the session. 

As I retied, glade let me know he saw a fish near the surface not far from me. When I was rigged up again I made a cast to the area he described, but this fish was not as big a fan of the ant as the last one. Glade said it refused the fly and retreated to the depths. I made some more searching casts, but with few fish rising I decided to abandon the single dry in favor of a light dry dropper, utilizing the same dry and a #20 2mm zebra midge. Glade could see a number of fish working nymphs elevated in the column off the rocks, and started calling out locations for me to cast. Evidently I made a few good casts that got refusals on both the dry and the nymph, but I couldn’t see the majority of them. I decided to switch to crawling nymphs after not too long because leading the cruising fish correctly with a dry dropper without seeing them wasn’t efficient. 

I started making casts to areas Glade pointed out and crawling the nymphs back with a mid speed hand twist. A few fish struck both an #18 pheasant tail and a #16 red cruncher, however they were some of the fastest, nippiest strikes I’ve ever experienced. I was already tight to the flies with the hand twist, and still couldn’t get the hook to stick. I tried a few different flies and retrieves, but nothing seemed to make a difference.

With just twenty minutes left, I continued working the bank, casting up and at a slight angle to fish Glade spotted from the rocks. Once I figured out that the fish that were going to eat were going to do it on the first cast, we started working much faster. Glade would spot a fish, I would cover it, and by the time I was done with my retrieve he would have another marked up the bank. I ended up getting eight eats on the nymphs, but finished that peg with none to hand. It was bit disheartening, but later I learned that a number of teammates and other competitors had similar experiences up there. 

I quickly packed up my gear and jumped on the trail to the next lake. I talked to a few competitors along the way, and learned that I was still in the game when most reported numbers less than three. In just a few minutes we arrived to the top of a large hill overlooking my beat. My controller said that the previous angler had only caught one fish from it the previous session, so I was nervous it may not be the productive water I needed to catch up with the pack.

This lake was significantly larger than my last one, and slightly less clear. The wind was blowing pretty hard into my bank, which is usually good for pushing bugs into the area. The peg was about the same size as my first, but spread in a straight line along the entire length of the downwind bank. It started in one half of a shallow inlet, where I marked a few small fish rising from the hilltop. After that there was a fairly large triangular point, and then a long stretch of rocky shoreline. The banks of the point and a bit of shoreline were covered with a type of low laying scrub brush that overhung the water a few inches. In practice we found these bushes tended to hold fish close to the bank, and were usually high margin spots. To the left of the point there was a large weed bed about fifteen feet out running the length of the bank. It was too thick to cast into, but there were a few channels in it that I thought would be good to crawl nymphs through. 

As I got my gear reset, Glade walked to the far end of the beat to see if there were any happy fish. When he got back he relayed that there was one rising fish in the near corner of the point, and nothing else to the far end of the beat, rising or otherwise. With a few minutes till the start, I decided to cover the rising fish with a dry if it was still there and then pull nymphs along the weeds. I tied the ant pattern back onto the four weight and crawled into position by the bank. As luck would have it though, another fish decided to swim over and start rising right in front of me a few seconds before the session started. When the controller said go, I let my fly fall right under my rod tip. As soon as it hit the fish rushed over and inhaled it. I popped it into the net and had my first World Championship fish on the board. 

I turned my focus to my original target fish. It was cruising a small area rising every thirty seconds or so. I popped the ant in the middle of its zone and quickly got a refusal. I saw a few small dark mayflies on the surface, so I switched to a size eighteen black shuttlecock. A few casts later the fish ate, but got off after a few headshakes. With no other obvious fish, I decided to put the ant back on and blind fish the bushes up the point. I had no luck on the edge, but when I got to the tip I made a slightly longer cast out into the lake. As small waves pushed the fly back towards the point, I watched a good fish rise from the depths of the transition and slowly take it from the surface. A quick hookset and net job later, and fish number two was scored. I walked back down the point to work the other side from the bottom up. The bushes were a bit more overhung on this side, so I started shooting casts under the overhang to get closer to the bank beneath. I had two fish eat, but missed both due to a slow reaction to the sound of the rise.

When I cleared the point, Glade let me know there was another fish rising a bit further down the bank. I made a few casts with the ant but the fish rose all around it with not so much as a look. I switched back to the shuttlecock and made a few casts, but the it was cruising too erratically and in too wide of an area; the fly would drift into the bank before it could even be seen. I held off casting for almost a full minute, waiting for the fish to settle into some sort of pattern. Before it did though, it swam over and started cruising toward me about four inches off the bank. As soon as it showed itself I dropped the fly right on its’ head with a lucky cast. It immediately rose and after a short fight was on the board. 

I didn’t have as much confidence in the shuttlecock for blind fishing, and I was out of the ant patterns that had worked so far. A larger black shuttlecock that I did well on in practice caught my eye, and I tied it on hoping it would perform here as well. Not far up the bank a fish decided it did indeed look good, and I added another to the scoresheet. I worked for a while with just one more refusal. As I neared the end of the beat, I came to an area with a bush on the bank and a large weed bed about ten feet out. I placed the fly right in between the two and a fish shot out of the weeds to do a backflip while also somehow grabbing my fly. I landed that one to make five fish with about ten minutes to go. With no more good water in front of me, I decided to run back to the bottom and cover the inlet I had skipped over. I got down with a few minutes left, but couldn’t convince another fish to eat. 

I felt pretty good about that finish, and learned from other anglers on the trail that I was now somewhere in the middle of the pack. On the way to the next peg, my controller somehow made a wrong turn, which brought us in on the opposite side of the beat than the previous anglers would have come from. We ended up coming in on the back side of a large patch of reeds that hid a thirty square foot depression with about fifteen fish cruising and rising consistently. The area was blocked from the beginning of the beat by a steep rock wall that ran almost all the way to start flag, with the more appealing deep water on the opposite side. It seemed like these fish had not been fished to yet and could be easier to fool.

I began re-rigging a dry fly rod while Glade scaled the rocks looking for more fish down the bank. When he returned, he said there was a good number sitting tight to structure all through the beat. I planned to take a few fish from the depression, and then start working down, ending with nymphs in the deeper water if need be. I took a few minutes to crawl into position to cast at two fish cruising a pattern that took them past the near bank.

When the controller said go, I had to sit still for a minute while waiting for one of the fish to move its head behind a small log. When it did, I made a cast a foot from it with the larger black shuttlecock. I got a good look but the fish ultimately decided it wasn’t what it wanted. When it tucked back into the reeds I brought the fly back, and replaced it with a #14 sialis- an imitation of the black alderflies that were plentiful in the area. I made a preemptive cast to the reed edge in the hopes the fish would come back the way it went in. A few seconds later it did just that and confidently rose to the fly. I somehow got it to the net fast enough to avoid spooking the other fish and was up to one on peg three. 

For the next thirty five minutes I crawled through the marshy area around the depression and picked off rising fish. I was at such a low angle that I couldn’t actually see most of the fish myself. Instead, I had Glade perch high up on the rock face and give me clock face call outs like a tarpon guide. He would tell me when a fish was looking at my fly, when it needed a twitch, and when to prepare to set. It was one of the most unique and fun sessions I’ve had the opportunity to fish.

I picked through most of the rising fish until there was just two remaining. I couldn’t convince them despite some good presentations and downsizing to the smaller black shuttlecock. As I was about to move on, Glade spotted the second of the original two fish cruising its’ line again. I made a few casts that didn’t hit the mark, but when the fish came into view I was able to drop the fly right on its head. It ate immediately, but due to the angle my hookset didn’t hold. I left the hole after that with a total of five scorable and six unscorable fish from the tiny area. 

After a quick scramble across the rock face, I came to the opposite edge of the reeds. Glade said he saw a fish cruising here earlier, so I snuck into position and made a tough cast over the reed tops. I knew I would only get one presentation before getting snagged on something, so if a fish was going to eat it had to be now. Luckily, the fish cooperated, and I was able to drag it between the reeds to the net. 

I moved down the bank to a bouldery area with a lot of crevices and rock pockets that could hold fish. Glade spotted one fish sitting in a thin crevice and gave me the call out. It took a few casts to get it right but eventually I made one good enough for the fish to move to. It ended up being my first and only rainbow of the competition, and to me looked stocked, though we were told they were all wild. Continuing on, I scored two more fish in a pretty similar way. I had about three minutes left when Glade told me to run down to the end of the rocks to a spot he saw a fish actively rising at the beginning. I got to the spot and saw the fish was still there and happy, but when I went to make my first false cast and some poor line control resulted in my fly ending up in a bush near the edge. Breaking off way the only way to avoid spooking the fish, but I only had around a minute to retie and hook the it. I got another fly on and made a cast, but just as the fly hit the water the controller called time. The fish turned but it was just too late. I ended up with eight fish on that peg, which brought me to thirteen total for the session. 

The hike to the next peg was the longest, so I packed up as fast as I could and took off down the mountain. I was going fast enough that I didn’t stop much to discuss numbers with many other anglers, but most I heard were a good bit lower than mine. We weren’t provided beat maps, so I had to rely on my controller for directions. Unfortunately, he was not incredibly familiar with the area, and made a wrong turn as we were getting close. We had to backtrack a bit, and I ended up getting to the peg with only about ten minutes of prep time. On top of that, my peg was massive- probably half a kilometer of bank.

We would only have time to walk half the beat, so we chose the more accessible left side. I immediately noticed a handful of fish rising all around the area, eating something invisibly small. As I had a few times before on these venues I joked to glade that they might as well be eating Bluetooth signal. The side we surveyed was somewhat unremarkable, consisting of a moderately steep, tree lined bank, with a few meter long weed bed near the flag. In a quick talk with one of the sector judges that had been on that lake all day, I learned the fish in this lake were much harder due to the incredibly clear water. The previous angler had blanked, and the two before him had done only marginally better. I knew I would need to be on my a game to get just a couple and make it to fifteen fish for the session. 

I started out with the same alderfly imitation that did me well in the previous session. Most of the rises were sporadic, but I keyed in on a fish that rose a few times off a rock near the bank. I put a few casts around it that I know were seen, but didn’t get any love. Whatever the fish were eating was extremely small, so I put on a sparse #20 black shuttlecock to get as close as I could. The fish rewarded this change with an eat, however due to the lighting at this point in the day, I’d lost track of my fly by the time it did. A late set resulted in a few headshakes and a broken heart. 

I continued down the bank casting at sporadic rises for a good while, receiving a few close refusals and nose pushes, but no solid eats. When I came to the weed bed, I put a long cast directly up the edge. Almost to my surprise, a fish launched itself out of the water to eat it. I played it with some extreme caution and babied it into the net. I felt a little pressure drop away knowing that I wasn’t going to blank, but I still felt like I needed to make one more fish happen before the session ended. 

The next handful of casts I put over the weed beds were met with nothing but refusals. As I worked further down the bank, the lighting changed enough that I could see fish as they cruised between the weeds and the bank. I focused on these fish for a while, cycling through a few small dries and then back to some larger terrestrials. With about fifteen minutes to go, a good sized rainbow swam past me headed into the weeds. I made a few casts around him with an ant pattern, which he eyed closely every time but didn’t like enough to eat. He was moving slow, so I quickly changed back to the small black shuttlecock and dropped it right in front of him. He promptly rose to eat it, but because of the air clear water, I set before he had the fly fully in his mouth. I felt weight on the line for a split second, but then it went slack. 

Thinking I needed a higher margin tactic, I took the dry off in favor of a #18 plain pheasant tail I used in practice. I dropped it in front of a few cruising fish, but was met with refusals even more half hearted than the ones I got with the dry. I figured maybe they needed a little shock to eat and briefly threw on a tan mop, but found even worse reactions. With less than five minutes to the end, I decided to make a last ditch effort with the floating line and double nymphs. I put a few long casts over the weed bed and crawled the flies back a few inches above the weed tops. On one retrieve I swore I felt a fish eat, but set into nothing. I was in the middle of the next cast when my controller called time. I was almost happy the end came as I was completely exhausted after running up and down the mountain all day, and I was even more thankful my final beat was the closest to the bus! 

I knew my fourteen fish would do me pretty well for the session. My controller was in a group chat with the other controllers on the venue, and kept telling me I had won. I was a little incredulous as I heard a few numbers in the double digits, but still hopeful that those anglers hadn’t faired as well the last session either. I had to wait almost forty five minutes at the bus to hear how everyone else did. I did end up getting beat out by Lubos Rosa, the Czech angler, by one fish. It was bittersweet because I took a two in my first World’s session, but missed out on a few of opportunities to land just one more fish and take a one.

The next four sessions my beat put up two, three, thirteen, and five fish. The thirteen shows I may have left a few on the table, but looking back there is not a whole lot I would change on this session. Knowing what I know now, I would have fished some smaller flies on much lighter tippets in the clear lakes. This seemed to be the defining factor in the teams that had consistent success on all their beats. A #22 fished on 8x may have gotten me another fish or two in the first or last lake. I also regret not trying more junk flies. Mops and worms received a few reaction bites in practice, and some of the clear lake fish may have been willing to do the same if I found the right ones. Of course, the handful of fish I missed, dropped, and broke off flash through my mind as well. I learned a few things about hook set timing and line control to practice here at home. And I don’t think I’ll ever forget to double check my knots again!

On the bus ride back I found out the rest of the team did well too. We were sitting in fourth place with pretty close shot at third. We ended up with thirty two placing points, Spain was in third with twenty seven, Ireland in second with twenty two, and France in first with nineteen. It was still anyones game to win, and everyone on the team had some pretty good intel to pass around. We were feeling pretty optimistic heading into session two.

 

If you liked this recap, stay tuned for my experiences in session two on the Têt River. If you’re interested in seeing the full scores and beat breakdowns from the competition you can find them here on Flycomps.com. Thanks for reading!

 

-Mike Komara