Craig Barr's talk thoughts

It was the MNTFA February winter programme night last night and Craig Barr was our speaker. He gave us some great stories about his competition exploits, raised some interesting views and gave me some food for thought for the forthcoming season.

A few topics of interest were:

Should you practice for competitions?
All he needed was the fly and location. I would whole heartedly agree with that but the key is how do you get it? Other team members practicing is one, inside information is another but there seems to be no substitute to being on the water. This just seems to change the knowledge experts from the people who practice to the ones who fish the water regularly. Most of the competitors do practice so you can get away with it occasional but you need to be brave to be the first to do it regularly.

He felt that venues get over fished by two days practice before competitions! More people now are catch and releasing on practice day to save the fish. The pressure of fishing definitely moves the fish on and even more markedly puts them down. How many times have we seen the fish go off when the pressure of boats increases? It does pay to have a strategy to move too fish and away from boat pressure.

No two days are the same! I would agree with this from a weather perspective. I have looked at the barometer regularly and it is up and down a few times a day. The insects and food sources do remain a little more constant however which would mean that your flies can be used more often from one day to the next. How often do the fish move around? They do move and quite long distances quickly but with many of the reservoirs stocking regularly they tend to initially run the wind and then find the nearest holding spot. Once here in my experience they quite often remain for a while.

Do rods and reels just do a simple job?
Craig felt the reels just hold the line and I agree that this is the only feature they do. For me a starter with Rimfly regulars because they were cheep and when wide arbours came in I changed to a greys GLX for similar cost reasons in that the cartridge system is simple and cheap. They need to be robust do the job well they are supposed to but I find it best to do your homework for what you want and stick with it.

He had a similar view on rods and when you find generally what you need this will do. Would this be your view?

Overall it gave me some good thoughts for the season you may here from me in future trips using two tone blobs, crunchers and practicing for a few competitions.