Pavlov's Carp

The weather was perfect for this time of year, one of those late hot days that seem to get the fish feeding hard. There were a lot of fish cruising around looking up , which is often the way in the days after a storm that's blown debris onto the water. There's always food in amongst the rubbish. It's been a while since I've fished in this situation so I was pretty pleased. I sat on the bank for a while trying to see what they were eating, but there didn't seem to be a pattern other than the fish rushing anything that fell in. There weren't enough of any specific item to make the fish focus on any one item, which used to frustrate me as it can result in a lot of fish rushing the fly and refusing it. Mid summer you can usually rely on a fish eating a terrestrial.

Luckily, a few years ago I accidently discovered a fairly reliable solution to these autumn fish. Annoyingly it's pretty obvious, but still took me a while to work out. By the end of the summer the fish here are conditioned to recognise the plop of fruit dropping in as food, food that isn't going to escape. It doesn't really seem to matter what type of fruit it is, and the effect is probably more pronounced if there are more types of fruit falling over a longer period. There are mulberry and cherry trees on this river which gives several weeks from mid to late summer to get the fish relly switched on to them. There's no fruit left by now, but the fish will still respond to a berry imitation, and they'll generally compete to get it as the fruit offers a better meal than the other small bits of edible vegetable matter that are being blown in. The fish are actualy easier to catch than when there are plenty of berries around. The tactic is pretty simple, make the fly land pretty hard in the vicinity of a fish, or preferably a group of fish and maintain a drag free drift- it probably won't drift very far though!

You'll catch fish on a foam fly, but they'll often spook on the eat because the buoyancy stops the fly being slurped down like a real berry. Egg yarn or deer hair are both better choices, as you can squeeze a little water in to them so they float low or just below the surface. Hopefully I'll get anouther week or two of this kind of stuff before things change.