Because we wouldn’t want to make our beloved and comprehensive ladies angry, Johan and I decided to enjoy a last minute day off before Valentine’s day, to go trout fishing.
Coyolles was our chosen venue and no matter the freezing cold, fish who seemed to switch off, we tried to crack the code
Our start was rather promising with a couple of nice fish caught on sight. Just look at this brown who showed off his rather big mouth to eat our size 18 nymph ! The wind picked up, but since Coyolles is a sightfishing eldorado, we insisted and went out looking for some fish.
But the enforcing wind really nailed these fish at the bottom, and we found out that, despite our high expectations, you still have to be prepared for the worst case scenario. Not one fish was showing its presence and it looked like the lakes were empty.
We were able to catch some more fish with the washing line method, but it was definitely not how we expected it to be. Just before lunch, Johan went off to the big lake and tried to find out what could be working. After putting on a weighted pheasant tail nymph, and presenting it at 1,5 m depth, two fish were caught in two casts.
He shouted to come over, and I tried this technique just in front of the reeds, and caught about 6 fish in less than 10 minutes. As Vincent and Celine rang the lunch bell, we went off to have a delicious cassoulet with duck, preparing our afternoon’s fishing.
We decided to continue looking for more fish at some depth, and Coyolles revealed its real potential. Fish after fish were hooked, and even more takes were missed. The fishing turned out to be just amazing, despite the still really freezing wind.
As Celine told us a dad and his son were discovering flyfishing, we decided to guide them and show how we fished. They were very happy, and after changing their leaders, they soon had some takes but were unable to connect. As it was too cold on the big lake, they asked some more advice but had to seek shelter and fish some spots out of the wind. We hope we were useful to them, and wish them good luck in enjoying our wonderful sport.
To be short, after getting into high numbers of nice trout, we decided to leave the hotspot, and try other techniques on less evident spots. Now it was my turn to crack the code, and I soon found out that I had to strip erratically my small nymphs to motivate some really nice trout.
Johan came over, adopted, and we were ending our day in style, still catching fish with different techniques.
Enjoy our pics, and don’t hesitate to go out there, and why not, try Coyolles. It’s a rather nice place for flyfishing fanatics !
Jeremy and Johan.