Snowy Mountain Rivers

 

On 27 October 2017 at 20:10, Tim wrote:

Hi,
I was watching a fly fishing show of the Willow Grub being used in NZ waters. Any idea of the success rate if used in the Snowies around Thredbo area?
Regards, Tim

 
 

Reply: Chatto 28 October 2017 at 06:41

HI Tim,

I can remember going through a similar thought process after a trip to NZ about 15 years ago and coming home and tying up a few version of these tiny flies. Willow grubs are essentially tiny surface / sub subsurface flies and I fished with them on and off for a couple of years on the Thredbo and the Mowamba but the success rate was very low.

willowc

For surface feeding fish old fall backs like small red tags and coch-y-bonddu consistently working better on the Mowamba for rising fish and hair winged royal coachmen works better for me on the Thredbo & Eucumbene.

#12 to #16 red tag

#12 to #16 red tag

cochybondduf hairwingf

For nymphing, where there is reasonable current in the river, my default flies are a skinny PTN or a small orange spider on the point and a TBH duracell (with appropriate TB weight to get the fly bouncing along the bottom) on a dropper about 60-80mm above the point fly.

TBH orange and partridge spider TBH pheasant tail nymph variant duracellj

Hope this helps.
Regards
Chatto.