One of the guys in the small group of fly fishers sitting a couple of hundred yards upstream, has taken his binoculars out and are staring straight at me, and its like I could hear him say " hey... what's that guy doing, wading out now when there is no activity". And he has sort of right about that, but.. I'm about to sneak out on one of my "secret" spots, and I was hoping no one would discover me.
Its one of those periods in the late summer when there is "almost" no hatch going on. You can see fly fishers sit alone or in small groups along the river waiting for some kind of hatch to start, drinking coffee and eventually beer, as frustration takes over.
And.. "I'm been there, done that" and still do, but after some hours drinking coffee and wondering why there is no hatch, its time to check out some of those secret spots.
Secret spots which are all located under a tree along the riverbank on quite shallow water, places I've found after I wandered restlessly along the river looking for rising fish. This particular place is one of the really nice spots, there is always a fish under the tree. What's interesting about this place is that this is often the only place the fish are rising, although the river around are holding a lot of fish. The hatch are quite local since it just appear a couple of yards above the fish. And since you cant see the fish rise before you are quite close, not many people have discovered it....yet.
This day the fish were really going, rising every fifteen seconds. And it locked like the fish were feeding on something small that were popping up just a couple of yards above the fish. It was a perfect moment to try out the 7' 4wt taper fresh out from the workshop, accompanied with the the old Pflueger Medalist charged with silk line and silk leader from mr Zandri in Italy, perfect for short distance casting under the trees.
And I realized after a while that the fish were feeding on small midge pupa's laying deep in the surface of the water. And after the second cast with the #20 midge pupa, there was a brown and yellow head sticking up above the surface right where the midge pupa should have been. After a few minutes there was a lovely trout around 3 pound laying in the landing net. I turned around checking if the guys at the bench were still there, but no one were there, they probably left long before the fish went for the midge pupa.