Fishing soft hackle flies for yellowfish

It was one of those hot muggy days in January with the incessant sound of cicadas singing in the surrounding bushes that I found myself crouched low, stalking a golden green shape in a gorgeous looking run on a small stream close to Calitzdorp. I was rigged up with an 8 and a half foot 4 weight fly rod, weight forward floating fly line and 10 foot leader that had two soft hackle flies attached. my tippet was 4x Rio Powerflex. The first fly was a #14 partridge soft hackle with a flash body and a brassie soft hackle in #12 was on the point. The water was not clear but not overly dirty either with visibility being about 30cm. The water that I was about to fish had several large boulders and a lot of smaller ones with an average depth of about 40cm and a lovely flow that yellowfish tend to prefer. there was an overhanging tree on the right hand bank that seemed to hold quite a few yellowfish. I was very glad that the water was not gin clear like the Western Cape streams for one very important reason. Unlike trout that tend to face upstream and wait for food items to drift to them, smallmouth yellowfish move around a pool or run and can often be facing you. The limited visibility meant that the fish would have a much harder time spotting me. I found that wearing clothes that blended in with the surrounding bush was still very important because of the fishes keen eye sight. Another big difference between fly fishing for trout and yellowfish is that yellowfish tend to school and will move around the river in numbers. Trout tend to inhabit suitable runs and rapids singularly and will often inhabit the same spot for days and weeks on end.  They will sometimes school in a large pool, especially in the heat of summer but in a run or rapid they tend to be solitary.  

I was fishing with Mark Krige, one of the best all round fly fishers in the country and we were making a DVD on fly fishing for yellowfish in small streams. Fishing with Mark is always fun and I think I end up learning more about the sport watching him fish than I have from any book or magazine. This time around, Mark was filming me as I fished. I had spent a very enjoyable few hours filming Mark upstream nymphing and the grace and precision with which he could pick off a sighted fish must be seen to be believed. On the DVD there are several amazing shots of Mark spotting a yellowfish 15 meters ahead of him. A cast is fired out with precision and a split second later the fish takes the nymph and is hooked. it really is poetry in motion. But I digress.

Once in position to make a relatively short cast upstream I waited to see what the smallmouth yellowfish was going to do. It was positioned facing upstream and was leisurely grazing on insects off the rocks. I made my cast a few feet upstream of the fish and let the soft hackle flies drift relatively drag free back towards me while I kept the rod tip as high as possible and fed in the slack line. 

Brassie soft hackle

On about the third cast the flies drifted past the yellowfishes position and I was just about to lift up and recast when out of the depths another fish rose and inhaled the point fly. I set the hook and watched as the fish swam off at top speed around the pool.

This was the first time that I had used soft hackle flies on yellowfish. I have had a lot of success fishing soft hackles for trout and tilapia in rivers and lakes for many years. The smallstream environment of the Calitzdorp area was the ideal place to experiment with these flies on yellows and I would use the knowledge gained here to catch some amazing specimens in the larger rivers of the Orange and Vaal later on. 

 

Pearl bodied soft hackle

Soft hackle wet flies are amongst the oldest flies in existence with patterns dating back to the 14th century in Europe and even longer in Japan where they were used by Samurai fishing the Tenkara style. North country spiders, hackle flies or just spiders are several of the more traditional names given to soft hackle flies. The list of famous soft hackle patterns is long and as old as fly fishing literature itself. March brown, snipe bloa, dark needle, partridge and orange, Greenwell's glory, Stewards black spider, Edmunds yellow spider and hares ear are just some of the many famous names. They are just as deadly today as they were then. There are several reasons for this effectiveness. The soft hackle materials used in the collar of the fly pulse with life underwater and the profile of the fly represents many different insects in various stages of emergence. A soft hackle fly can be proofed to fish as a dry fly or emerger or tied on a heavier hook to represent adult caddis, stonefly or mayfly nymph. It is also an excellent representation of midge pupae, all of which are on the yellowfishes diet. They also can represent snails or sunken beetles and ants.

There are many fly companies in South Africa that tie soft hackle flies although getting your hands on a huge variety of different types could be challenging. The most popular types are plentiful by if you want to get the best out of fishing soft hackle flies, it pays to tie your own. This is also important because commercially tied soft hackle flies are often tied on lighter wire hooks meant for trout.

A huge plus is the ease at which a soft hackle fly can be tied. There are very few "parts" or steps involved. You can use just about any game bird or hen hackle as a soft hackle collar.

After landing a 15 inch yellow from the run, It took a few more casts before hooking into another very surprised yellow. It was evident that I had hit on a winning formula. 

A bit later,  I moved a little downstream to a bend in the river where a mini rapid emptied into a pool lined with vegetation. Using the same two soft hackle flies I made a cast downstream and across and let the flies swing with the current. Two casts later and the line straitened as another yellowfish latched onto the fly. I landed 5 more yellows from 14 to 20 inches in the next half hour using the soft hackle flies. Mission accomplished. There were several advantages to using the soft hackle flies on these smaller streams. They were easy to cast and made no audible noise when hitting the water (a heavily weighted nymph can often spook fish in small streams when they land), thus enabling pin point presentations close to feeding yellowfish. In my DVD "Fly fishing for smallmouth yellowfish in small streams with Sean Mills and Mark Krige", the DVD that we were filming at the time, you can see these soft hackle flies in action on the amazingly beautiful and intimate streams of the Carlitzdorp area.  That was 5 years ago and using soft hackle flies in tandem has been a winning combination for me when targeting yellowfish in small streams ever since.

Hare's Ear soft hackle

You can fish soft hackle flies upstream or downstream and you can dead drift them, swing them with the current or strip them back depending on the situation. They do not have to fish drag free like many nymphs to be effective. The current brings the soft hackle to life underwater and this subtle movement represents life to any fish in the area. Just make sure that you keep the rod tip high when fishing with them. The major reason for this is to prevent a break off when a fish latches onto the fly. They can hit a soft hackle fly very hard and if you point the rod tip directly at the fly with no slack in the line it is very easy to be broken off.... You do not need to use an indicator when fishing with these flies. Just watch the bend in the fly line for signs of a take. 

A year after making the DVD, I found myself fishing on the Vaal River at Parys. The water was quite high due to recent rains but this did not diminish the effectiveness of the soft hackle flies when the yellowfish moved into the shallower runs and rapids and I managed to land some awesome yellowfish up to 2.5kgs on the soft hackle flies. I even landed a few hard fighting mud fish on them.  

I also did very well using the soft hackle flies in Douglass on the Orange River. I had 20 fish afternoons using just a team of soft hackle flies. The success of the soft hackle flies is largely dependent on the time of day and temperature of the water when targeting yellowfish on larger rivers. When the water is warmer and the yellows are feeding in the rapids or runs on emerging insects is when soft hackle patterns really come into their own. If the yellowfish are feeding on the bottom in deeper water, then soft hackle flies will be less effective unless you can use a heavier fly to get them closer to the bottom. For me fishing soft hackle flies is about fishing them in tandem, with no extra weight and with no indicator on the line. This is a very pure, simple and elegant way of fishing them. This is why it is essential to find yellowfish feeding in shallower water for this style of fishing to come into its own. So this means in early spring that you would have to wait for the afternoon to fish with soft hackle flies because it can take the water that long to warm up enough. In summer however, as long as the fish are in a shallowish run or rapid you can have great success any time of the day, but especially in the evening when the major hatches come off. In the breeding season be aware of spawning yellowfish and rather move on to areas where the fish are not engaged in such behavier. This is simply ethical behaviour. 

I usually fish two soft hackle flies at a time for yellowfish on a ten foot leader (3 meters). Traditionally, a team of 3 flies is used and the flies fished down and across.  Yellowfish on larger rivers can be very powerful and using 3 soft hackle flies is a little over kill. I attach the first fly  on a 10cm dropper and the last one on the point. The distance between the two flies is usually about a meter or more. I use 3x tippet. My favourite soft hackle pattern is the copper wire bodied brassie using hen hackle or guinea fowl feathers as the soft hackle. These days you can get many different colours of coper wire. I use the medium size copper wire in copper, black, orange, chartreuse and red for these slightly heavier soft hackle flies. Tied on a #14 or 12 hook, this pattern gets down a little deeper ( a few centimetres) in the water and really delivers. I also love to use a black or orange bodied soft hackle for yellowfish. Other colours that work well are the lime green, mustard coloured and flash bodied soft hackles. Any soft hackle pattern will work for yellowfish however so it is up to you to experiment with the fish in your area. I am also fond of a yellow bodied soft hackle. Soft hackle bodies can either be composed of tying silk or dubbing. My flash bodied soft hackle flies use flashbou in pearl, wrapped in tight butting turns over black thread as the body. This flashy body mimics the shiny appearance of nymphs that pump gases into their bodies at the time of emergence. The soft hackle flies that i use are far from traditional and I will adapt the flies that i use to the species of fish and the area that I am fishing. 

Just make sure that you use very strong hooks when targeting yellowfish. Trout rarely reach a kilogram in our rivers but smallmouth yellowfish often reach 4 kilograms or more and even a 2 kilogram yellowfish can open up a light wire hook. You have been warned. I love the Fulling Mill 31530 Competition heavyweight hooks imported by Craig Thom at www.streamx.co.za They come in packs of 50 and are keenly priced. This is a 3x strong, 1X short bronze hook that is very strong and has the perfect bend for soft hackle flies. I have never had one open up on me.

When fishing on the Orange and Vaal Rivers I step up my tackle to a 9 foot 5weight rod because the fish tend to be bigger and more powerful. A 10 foot rod can also be highly beneficial and is the preferred length for traditional soft hackle fishing in Europe. Although not covered in this article, I have noticed that using a soft hackle fly on the top dropper when Czech style nymphing can be very effective on these larger rivers when fishing in deeper runs and rapids.

I did a web search recently on yellowfish flies used in this country by other fly anglers and most lists had at least one soft hackle pattern. This I think is testament to how affective these flies are for yellowfish. 

I am a great advocate of using de barbed hooks no matter what type of fly fishing that I am doing. I also like to offset the hook to the left or right as this definitely improves the effectiveness of the fly. If you look at most bait holder hooks you will notice that they are off set to improve their hooking potential. 

For me, small stream yellowfish and soft hackle flies go together like hotdogs and mustard. So when you are next on a yellowfish stream, give the humble soft hackle fly a try, you may well be pleasantly surprised by the results... It certainly beats the humdrum of Czech style nymphing.

For more info on the DVD "Fly fishing for smallmouth yellowfish in small streams" click here www.seanmillsflyfishing.weebly.com