From my box. Pups

From my box. Pups

by Kuba Chruszczewski

         One of the June mornings , quite tired , sleep-deprived , and above all discouraged ( since dawn I tried unsuccessfully to catch something on a streamer) I was going down the river unhurriedly. The weather is beautiful, it promises to be hot, but at this time( 9-10 am) and in such conditions there is probably not much to do on the water anymore, you have to go back. Below the place where I always went to the left bank, there was a nice, fairly fast current falling later into a calmer, deeper trough. And on this very current and below I saw that something was happening after all. A few ponds, some grunts flying over the water. Ot, such medium-sized, beige ones. I was a little reluctant to unfold the rod already packed in the case, but what the heck.... I put on a floating line, dry crustaceans to the eye similar to those , which fly. By the time I put the whole set together, the insects seemed to have disappeared, the mesh was also gone. I cast for the peace of conscience a couple of times and decided to finally end fishing that day. Not the first and not the last time without a fish....

    Soon I visited the place again, but this time already prepared, with a set of fresh crustaceans in the box. I already know that there are some fish here, so far I have avoided this place, if it were not for this morning outlet on which I came a little by accident, I would probably continue to avoid. Well , we'll see ... And I was not disappointed. Just before sunset, the first insects appeared. The same crustacean as before. A small, beige one. I had imitations prepared in the form of bright Elk Caddis on a #12 hook. I tied one such to a 0.14 leader and got to work. Unfortunately, quite intense feeding fish ignored my fly. Changing to a smaller, larger one in a different color didn't work. While it was still quite bright I changed the fly to the one I started with. And finally I managed to catch a fish. Unfortunately, it was an undersized trout, which, in addition, massacred my crunch so that it lost almost all of its wings, quite delicate, because they were made of deer hair, as well as the blackberry on the trunk, as a result of which it stopped swimming. What was left of it was a rather thick torso and literally a few hairs of deer hair. It was already a little too dark to change the fly, besides, it was probably time to finish at all, because on hearing I find that the bites are almost gone. But what the hell, I'll still cast a few times out of obligation. And I did cast. With this devastated, washed-out brushwood, guiding it like a wet fly. In five casts I had three decent fish, including one, the biggest one went with the fly. It's well known, the biggest ones always get away.

  This is how, by accident and completely unknowingly, I discovered the bottom fishing method. (pupa  Latin: doll, in several languages pupa, in Czech kukla 😉 ).

And yet we all know situations when an insect flies out, a fish feeds until it's nice, and just look, and it will start to bite the trousers of the waders, and you stand by the water, seemingly doing everything right, and yet something is wrong. Very wrong... In my opinion, the biggest mistake in such a situation is the stubborn use of dry crunch. It took me a few seasons after the situation described above to refine the method of catching caddisflies during the outlets on the imitation nymph, which goes towards the surface for the final transformation. I have the impression that this moment is taken advantage of by larger, more cautious fish.

  Fishing with this method requires a certain rather specific way of running the set.

We start as we would with a wet fly. Cast diagonally downstream. The faster the water, the more across the current. Then I do a mending, in faster water a second one, and pick out the excess line. I hold the recovered loop of line in my left hand, passed under the finger of the right hand holding the handle, as is done when fishing for salmon - about the loop in a moment. Now I tilt the rod so that the top grommet almost touches the water, and the line forms a line with the rod as close to straight as possible. By guiding the set in this way, the fly first moves quite quickly in an arc across the current, and then hovers motionless below the surface. Such behavior, seemingly unnatural, fish associate ( at least I hope so, as I have already mentioned somewhere , I have never been a fish) with the behavior of a larva that breaks through the surface of the water and tries to proceed to the last stage of transformation, to finally, after a short rest on the surface, fly away as a perfect insect. When you hold the fly in place for a while, and the bite has not occurred, then you can pull the set up a meter or two and again hold it in place for a while. It is worth adding some semblance of life to such a bottom hanging below the surface by vibrating the rod tip slightly. Always try to locate the fly in the place where you noticed the exit of the fish. A strike on a fly guided in this way is sometimes very violent, the set is upright, and the fish, after grasping the lure, turns back to the bottom. So you should absolutely not jerk the rod. The fish will strike itself, and sometimes it can tear off the leader, which is too thin, just by jerking. For this reason I never use a leader thinner than 0.15,

And the „salmon” loop mentioned above is an additional safety device. When the fish pulls these few tens of centimeters of line from under the finger, then it is enough to lift the rod and start the tow. Of course, it happens that fishing downstream with the described method we suddenly see an interesting exit from the side, not far from our position. Then it is worth casting briefly in the direction of the outgoing fish so as to place the fly above its position and guide the set as in the classic wet method, carefully watching the line and leader - the strike will not be as clear and strong as in the case described above, and any suspicious movement of the set should be greeted with a jerk „from the stick”. There is also a third method of bottom fishing. In smooth and calm water, when it is difficult to approach the fish at a short distance, the method described by me in the article „Kuba style” in WW 2.2010 is worth recommending, only that with the use of imitation cockle bottoms.

     The flies used for this method, which is precisely the bottoms, have a rather distinctive silhouette. They are distinguished by a thick abdomen with a spindly shape, long whiskers and legs located along the thorax. But you can also successfully use appropriately selected in terms of coloration and size wet flies, for example, wingless flies with a long, not too dense blackberry. I present some of my favorites, tried in many fisheries.

Descriptions of flies.

1.

 Hook - so called gudgeon, #12-8

Thorax - light green anthrone with a glossy addition

 Scroll - body stretch, grey ostrich radius

Blackberry - partridge

The pupils - rays of a guinea fowl feather

2.

Hook - so called gudgeon, #12-8

Thorax - 2/3 olive green anthrone with SLF, 1/3 brown anthrone

Scroll - silver wire

Blackberry - partridge

Wing bundles - feather tips of a grizzly hen

The feelers - two hairs of a badger

3.

Hook - so called gudgeon, #12-8

Torso - 2/3 yellow and celadon anthrone covered with light bodystretch, 1/3 brown dubbing with glossy addition

Scroll - silver wire

Legs - 6 rays of pheasant rudder with knots

The sensilla - two muskrat hairs

4.

Hook - straight, #14- 8

Thorax - reddish-brown dubbing

Scroll - copper wire

Blackberry - hen of the hayseed

The pupils - two hairs (probably bear hair ?...).

Head - rays of a pheasant's rudder twisted with a leading thread.