Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 1 March 2019
I’m standing in the middle of river with guest. It is kind of shoal. He is fishing spot with dry fly where we saw some rise earlier. We hear loud rise from our left side and little bit behind. My guests is turning and he wants to try that one he heard. I tell him that why not but it is not big one. And then we start to discuss, it has happen often and will happen again on coming summers.
Of course there is always vastarannan kiiski (ruff from opposite shore, which basicly means that someone is against everything you say) so lets just say expection but I have notice that there is basic lines about noise of rise and what size fish there is.
So there is rises which are like needle’s stitch on water. Those make small rings and they are small fishes. There is not point to even try those, fish are normally smaller than 10 cm more like 5 cm. What we heard was loud splash, fish was not jumping but rise was loudy. Those make rings of course but size of fish is normally something like 20-25 cm, not bigger than that.
Then there is kind of normal rise, nice size rings afterwards, not really noise at all. Those are something to try allready, often those are around 35- 40 cm fishes. Then what you are really after, maybe only noise of suction, or not noise at all but big rings. And of course there is big fish then.
I think that big fish are like royal, they see what they want to have and they come to take it. It is kind of attitude, this is mine, I don’t have to make big number about this. The small fish, they come with all eagerness, no fear attitude. And then there is running trout and salmon but but they are jumping and they have different reason for that.
So those were kind of guidelines for rise. Are those accurate? Who knows because nobody has been able to break the code and nobody will. And strikes will go about same guidelines. If you are using the poppers or surfboard then takes will be really meant to kill. But this is how I seen fishes to take flies and dries.
So I hope that you had something to think about and maybe helping you to focus bigger ones. Oh, what my guests got from noisy rise. It was grayling about 20 cm and from spot we saw rises. Nice grayling about 40 cm.
Have a nice weekend
Mika from Finland