Scottish, Not Scotch

The first was of my first gourami encounter in Royal Belum - I really need to go back there!- Paul and I were looking for gourami and found some at some stumps around dusk. My presentation was totally ignored but we moved to another set of stumps and there was another fish there. This one didn't ignore the presentation, instead it gave the fly a long inspection. Nothing particularly noteworthy here so far, but what happened next blew my mind, the gourami stopped looking at the fly and then appeared to follow the tippet, then leader and then fly line to the boat before turning and disappearing. I'm reluctant to use the term spooked, because it seemed more deliberate than that; a response rather than a reaction. It really makes me wonder about the intelligence of some of our targets. It can't all be instinct for every species, the question is if there's enough intelligence for us to exploit it, and then how. Obviously this will vary with different species, but intelligence can be a weakness as much as a strength if you can find a way around it.

The other thing I remembered was an old method of nymphing that I haven't seen or done for probably 25 years, you never see it in magazines or anything anymore. Not because of efficacy, because it's devastating. My suspicion is that it's more to do with it not being FIPS compliant so no use for competition and there's no incentive for the competitive anglers to write about it. So what is the method? I've seen it called different things; the Scottish leader, the Scotch (ugh) method, other things. We just called it bugging. It's very simple, evolved from Czech nymphing in the 1990s. If I still lived at home I'd definitely still be doing it for my winter Grayling fishing. Basically you do without a fly line, but rather than a mono rig, you run straight backing, ideally fluorescent yellow or orange dacron, take a black permanent marker and add 4" bands over the last 5' or so. Then splice a loop in the end, you can add a tippet ring if you like. Then the business end is PE braid say 10lb, nice and thin. You can either attach a short length of fluorocarbon or nylon to that or tie your flies directly to the braid. I prefer the monofilament option as there's a bit more stiffness for tangle resistance. Attach your weighted bugs, with the option of putting a really heavy number on the point if flows are heavy, the idea being to make it semi sacrificial and pull the team down to the deck. When you first try it it's a bit weird because there's next to no stretch in the system and you'll probably think you're feeling too much. Once you get used to it it's incredibly effective, not only do you have the usual visual indications from a tightline presentation but you'll also find the extra sensitivity means that you'll sometimes feel the take before you see it, or not feel it as might actually be what you experience. Especially in cold winter conditions you'll start to notice that the all the extra feelings will disappear just before the "indicator" section of dacron registers it. Not competition legal, but no less fly fishing than a mono rig IMHO. give it a try.

I'm not sure I'd be keen on braid tippet for the flats and reef edges though.