Lake Fyans

Weather forecast looked fairly promising if somewhat cold so made a relatively late start and passed Redherring headed the wrong way(poor guy had to work)  arrived at the lake around 11 o'clock. Met up with Wokka who was having a chat to someone who'd been out earlier. After a brief chat and setup we formed a basic plan of attack and headed out.

Conditions were reasonably good with a nice bit of cloud cover and some wind to keep the surface broken up. The plan was to work through the reeded area and trees on the way to the dam wall and island region. We set out together slowly trolling an assortment of lures and plastics. I was trying a white Rapala husky jerk along with a Damiki ripper with a small spinner blade attached to the jighead, Wokka was trying a tassie devil and a small plastic. 

Things started off fairly quietly with only the occasional weed fish to clear up, whilst it was mostly floating weed being picked up I was finding my plastic was getting a little to deep and dropping into the ribbon weed despite the spinner blade adding some extra lift. So a quick downsize to a 1/8th jighead and I was off again. We worked our way through the trees around the dam wall without managing to find even a redfin let alone a trout and made our way down towards the flooded island region. This area has been my most successful over the last few trips up here and it didn't let me down again. 

Heading out slightly wider to clear the weed beds my front rod loaded up and it was on! I turned the yak into the wind and did the always stylish one handed wind to clear my second line whilst what felt like a decent bit of fish ran wild dragging line happily with run after run. With the second line cleared and the kayak facing into the wind I began the fight back which became even more serious when a nice big brown took to the air on one of many jumps throughout the fight. Despite my best efforts keeping the rod as low to the water as possible this guy was determined to prove it's not just rainbows that can take to the air. After a few more runs and some  relocation of gear I soon had a nice 52cm brown alongside and in the net.

  Camera was a piece of rubbish and now being replaced so no decent shots sorry, luckily Wokka got one with a nice tree in it, before release.

Thanks for the photo Wokka

Things looked promising for the session with a quality start. We headed back over the area casting plastics, Wokka had a couple of hits in amongst the trees but no joy. A few rough gusts of wind came through so I decided to head back up to the dam wall and hide out for awhile whilst Wokka kept working the island area. I drifted the wall casting plastics and trailing some powerbait behind. No sooner had I cast than my bait rod took off but failed to hook up. I've been playing with circle hooks and powerbait lately but finding they're not as successful given the way you shape the bait onto the hook rather than leave it hanging below so think I may give it away. 

 Dozens of casts finally saw a small redfin alongside but repeated casts to the area showed no sign of a school and in the end he proved to be the only one for me for the day. Drifted back with the wind to troll the island region again with no luck this time and the wind continuing to pick up, hooked back up with Wokka and we headed back  towards the reed region, absolutely gorgeous conditions that just screamed fish but despite tossing a wide range of lures and plastics there was nothing going. Must get back here for an early or late session, this area just screamed cruising trout in the low light.

Met Redherring as we were heading back in(who probably cleaned up on fish as the twilight hit) and that was it for the session. Great to catch up with a few more kayakers and to add a nice brown to the tally for the season